Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 61

Following John Brown’s raid, the atmosphere became extremely tense. When people believe they are trapped and are threatened with destruction, they take the only option left — to fight. In 1859, many of the Southern states certainly viewed the situation in this way. The North’s opposition to slavery as an institution left the South with very few options. Southerners were defending constitutional guarantees, as they saw it, and those guarantees were worth fighting for.

The North also felt trapped by the debilitating effects slavery had on the nation. As long as the South maintained its hold on political and economic power, the nation would continue to stumble from one crisis to the next. The implied threat of the South using the Constitution and the Supreme Court to impose its repugnant system on the country angered and frightened many Northerners. Many believed the time was coming to resist such attempts at destroying freedom.

By 1859, without a broad national consensus and the ability to see beyond this growing sense of fear, the United States was spinning out of control. At one time, most Americans believed that sectional trouble could be blamed on radical agitators on both sides; this was no longer the case, however. Many Americans came to see some sort of armed clash between the North and South as inevitable, an “irrepressible conflict” in the words of William Seward, a Northern Republican.