Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 29

When you examine the nature of the political struggle between 1850 and 1860, you can identify five separate events, each having a distinct effect on the nation. When viewed separately, they don’t seem to amount to much, but in the climate of the times, each event had a cumulative effect on the other, building a sense of nearly unbearable crisis and tension within the population that could not find release. The threat of open conflict, unthinkable in the country in 1850, became almost a predetermined conclusion by 1860.

One of the good and useful things about history is that it grants people the ability to look at events in the past, separated by time from the passions and confusion of the day-to-day events, and see how events connect in the long term. In doing this, certain events serve as guideposts to understanding how such a dramatic event as a civil war occurred. For your enjoyment and edification, the decade from 1850 to 1860 can be evaluated in terms of five steps that led to war:

 The struggle for Kansas

 The rise of the Republican Party

 The Dred Scott decision

 John Brown’s raid

 The election of Abraham Lincoln

This chapter examines each one of these points in detail, then puts them all together to provide a backdrop for the growing sense of crisis that finally led to war.