United States turmoil and bloody civil war from 1860 to 1876

United States turmoil and bloody civil war from 1860 to 1876

From 1860 to 1876 the United States was in turmoil. A bloody civil war tore the country apart from 1861 to 1865, and in the war’s aftermath the United States struggled to put itself back together as it dealt with a host of complicated social problems created by the demise of slavery in the south.

By 1876 the nation was politically reconstructed, but the social system that condemned African Americans to a subordinate position in the region was quickly re-established with segregation replacing slavery. Meanwhile in the north, the war accelerated the process of industrialization and set the stage for the United States to emerge as a true industrial power on the world stage.

The political, economic, and social factors that led to the Civil War were complex, but in the end they were all tied to the fact that in 19th-century America one section of the country maintained the institution of slavery while the other did not. From the founding of the United States under the Constitution slavery was a major part of American life, and the great contradiction of the entire American existence.

Thomas Jefferson, the founding father who authored the Declaration of Independence and also owned slaves, embodied this national turmoil. Speaking for enlightened southerners of his day, Jefferson famously declared that slavery was like a man holding a wolf by the ears.

The man might not like it, but he did not dare let it go. As the abolitionist movement in the north began to emerge in the 1830s southern politicians and many white southerners in general began defending slavery with greater vigor, and a succession of national events widened the gulf between America’s slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. In 1848 the United States acquired a vast amount of western territory as the result of the Mexican War, and the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed there began to dominate political discourse at the national level. Two years later the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states reached a temporary compromise on the issue, but during the 1850s the national debate over slavery escalated. Radical politicians in the south fanned the flames of secession through the decade with blustering, emotional speeches designed to instill fear in their constituents.

The “southern way of life” was under siege, they claimed, and white southerners as a whole should be ready to fight if necessary to maintain their station in society. The rhetoric grew stronger with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, and in 1854 when pro-slavery and anti-slavery partisans went to war in what became known as Bleeding Kansas.