The Civil war preserved the nation created in 1776, but it transformed it as well. The old decentralized republic where the federal government had few direct contacts with its citizens morphed into one that taxed them directly, drafted men into its army, regulated the economy by creating a national currency and banking system, enlarged its powers over state courts, confiscated billions of dollars of personal property by emancipating 4 million slaves, and engulfed a young country in bloodshed on a scale unparalleled in world history. In addition, both sides made use of recent technological advances in railroads and telegraphic communication to synchronize military movements over vast distances.
In the 1850s, a polarization set in over uncompromising differences on slavery and states’ rights. White Northerners came to believe that the bondage of chattel slavery was morally unsustainable, while white Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery to the western territories would consign it to death. The election of Abraham Lincoln on a Republican ticket in 1860 sealed the crisis.
The armed conflict that ensued was the most intense in human history, and its effects were felt on every level of society. It ravaged the economy, destroying farms and businesses and bankrupting banks. Many families lost everything they owned, including their lives. The savage fighting, especially in gargantuan battles like Shiloh, Gaines’ Mill, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga, was the most horrific event of the century. But most Americans survived the war, and a remarkably durable public memory of it emerged. White Northerners viewed it as a crusade that saved the Union; black Americans placed freedom at the center of their memories.