Assess the factors that led to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 The main factor that caused the American Civil War in 1861 was slavery as it was the underlying fundamental division between Northern and Southern societies that made living in harmony impossible. However, we must also examine the economic disparity between the North and South, political failure to manage the situation and the impact of the election of Lincoln in 1860. Although slavery is the underlying reason, the civil war would not have happened if it were not for the financial divide that developed because of slavery. These core factors were exacerbated by political mismanagement, a catalyst for the outbreak of the Civil War and Lincoln’s election in 1860, the trigger factor. Despite this, had it not been for slavery, there would have been no initial divide between North and South which created economic disparity and led to Southern paranoia over Northern expansionism which led to war, thus the most important factor.
In the excerpt, from The Decline of Radicalism, Daniel J. Boorstin shows the dissimilarities between dissent and disagreement. He says, “Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.” This quote is proven to be invalid throughout history. Examples such as women and African Americans trying to get what they know they should and what they deserved to. Throughout history, women were not treated with the same rights as men were. Many of them tried extremely hard to get the rights that men had, trying to vote especially.
This led to Indian suffrage and deaths of thousands of Native Americans. The Indians called this the trail of tears, describing it as a journey that sickened and starved them. Some Indians tribes, like the Cherokees, tried to resist the acts and made treaties to protect them. But they were brutally harassed and angered. Indians depicted it as becoming denationalized as document H explains.
* The Age of Jackson, from the 1820's to the 1830's, was a period of American history full of contradictions, especially in regard to democracy. * During the Age of Jackson, enslavement of Blacks, the ultimate form of inequality, was at a new high in America. At the same time, enormous disparities of wealth existed between rich merchants, industrialists and planters, and immigrants. The Jacksonian Democrats were, to some extent, champions of the Constitution, democracy, liberty, and equality. However, in other ways, Jackson and his followers clearly failed to live up to their ideals.
In the Cornel West article "Nihilism in Black America" he argues that the dilemma of African Americans is nihilism. This is somewhat parallel to W.E.B Dubois's Talented Tenth speech in 1903. Nihilism, according to West, is the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and lovelessness. African Americans are threatened by the lack of hope and the “absence of meaning” in their lives. Dubois's philosophy not only shows nihilism in the black race during this era but it also shows the same lack of progression in the black community in 2011.
It would have been simply unreasonable to deny women the right to vote, especially now that women had more of a presence in society. However, some historians argue that the war was not actually as important as previously assumed because the women that were enfranchised were not the women who had been working for the war effort. Rex Pope, when discussing changing attitudes towards women says “Attitudes to
Even though she thinks it’s unfair she hesitates and recognizes that men and women should have equal rights. Since most writers in the 18th century were men, society looked at women writers more on the negative side or didn’t take women serious. Between 1700s and 1800s, Anna wanted femininity. Considering women writers didn’t have much freedom with their own creativity. She says, “thou mayest command, but never canst be free”(20).
She also talks about how categories such as gender, race and class are not “free standing distinct systems” but instead “mutually constructing” intersecting systems, which doesn’t play much to her favor since she is a black female. Being that our society is a patriarchy (male dominated) and has been for so long, (women started to get the right to vote in the US in the year of 1920) it may seem odd or even hard when people have to answer up to a woman in charge; because we are just simply not use to it. In Patricia Hill Collins’s article she makes it seem that poverty and low economic opportunities seem inevitable towards black women: “Black men’s lower income meant that the majority of Black women could not marry wealth nor could their mixed-race children inherit it”. It truly seem like an ongoing process since, even their children have to start from
The tyranny civilians felt was surreal. In “Aint I a Woman”, Sojourner Truth anxiously talked about how and why African-American women did not have the same rights as white men had and why there was no equality between them. Bell Hooks’, “Talking Back” also shares significance with what Truth had to express. Hooks conveys that even though women have the right to speak, they are not being listened to and what they say does not make a difference in the matter. Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government”, has many similarities with Martin Luther King Junior’s letter.
Without the split between NAWSA and the NWP, suffrage would have experienced many roadblocks. While determined and persistent, the women of NAWSA believed firmly that the only way suffrage could be achieved was through a state-by-state campaign, a long and arduous process. At the time of the 19th Amendment’s ratification, the majority of states had not granted women the right to vote. Although the suffrage movement could have eventually succeeded, it would have been incalculably stalled without the formation of the NWP. In addition, the suffrage movement would have been robbed of the vocal and passionate leaders Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.