One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history – how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. This XSeries will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation – the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. In South Carolina before the war, for instance, there were 965,000 hogs. The war had been mostly fought in the South and much of its wealth had been destroyed. American History (The House Divides and Wars End Brings Freedom). (Niven 1990, 83) The Kansas-Nebraska Act deepened the already existing gulf between the North and the South that would eventually push the nation to Civil War. This course is part of the XSeries, Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. Another Civil War development with powerful implications for the nation's economy was the wartime devastation visited on the South. By September 1862, Lincolns initial position regarding the war and slavery had. It received President Pierce’s signature on May 29, 1854. We will examine the impact of key events such as Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and end with the dissolution of the Union in the winter of 1860-61. It traces how the issue of the expansion of slavery came to dominate national politics, and how political leaders struggled, unsuccessfully, to resolve the growing crisis. After discussing the institution of slavery and its central role in the southern and national economies, it turns to an account of the political and social history of the 1850s.

A House Divided: The Road to Civil War, 1850-1861 begins by examining how generations of historians have explained the crisis of the Union.

War divides the nation 1861 map