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American Origins
Before the Civil War, America became a vast laboratory of experimentation about how to attain a just society through individual and social reform. Inspired by a religion that preached salvation through good works, Americans discovered all kinds of ways -- from ecstatic religious revivals to temperance reform -- to give a larger moral purpose to their lives. Gradually, these reform movements coalesced over the question of slavery. In the North, evolving conceptions about individual rights made increasing numbers reject the idea that democratic society could permit slavery. Counterattacking, southern leaders argued that the federal government could not supersede the rights of individuals in the separate states. Politically, the period was one of increasingly desperate compromise to avoid the threat that slavery posed to the Union. By the mid-1850s, the situation was so inflamed that compromise was no longer possible, and the nation moved to a showdown on the issue it had long avoided. |