American Toby Jug Museum 

Civil War double-sided character jug produced by Royal Doulton of Burslem, England, in a 2007 limited edition of 350. The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865) was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of controversy over slavery were brought to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The war began when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over a third of the U.S. population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. Featuring a Union soldier on one side and Confederate soldier on the other, Union and Confederate flags form the handle of the jug.