The impact of secessionon war upon American culture

It has been the curious fate of the United States to exert immense influence in the modern world, without itself quite understanding the nature of this influence. Major trends of the modern world both constructive trends and socially injurious ones have repeatedly become apparent in the United States before they became evident elsewhere. But though the United States has often been a step ahead in the process of social change, it has frequently been a step behind in its awareness of the meaning of new developments. The shape of things to come often became visible in America earlier than it did elsewhere, but American preconceptions about the frontier, the classless society, and the agrarian basis of democracy prevented Americans from perceiving this shape as realistically as it was perceived by social thinkers in other countries. A? If Americans have failed effectively to interpret their experience to people in other societies, it is in part because they have not always been able to explain it to themselves. Further, the distinctive qualities of life in America have caused a good many forces which were generically universal to take forms which seemed more restrictively peculiar to the New World than they really were. A? Thus in the late eighteenth century, America executed the first democratic political revolution of a democratic age, but American society was already so equalitarian that the revolutionary implication was muted. Without any great social overturn, the American War of Independence seemed conservative when compared with the socially cataclysmic forces released in France a decade later. A? In the twentieth century the United States developed what was perhaps the first mass society, but the American cult of equality and individualism prevented Americans from analyzing their mass society in realistic terms. Often they treated it as if it were simply an infinite aggregation of Main Streets in Zenith, Ohio.

4 America has witnessed episodes of extreme industrial conflict, but these have not been interpreted in the class terms which a Marxist society would invoke. America has experienced a sweeping revolution in sex behavior, but has not incorporated this change into the system of values by which it explains itself.

Ironically, the United States has cherished a belief in its mission to spread a democracy for which it has had difficulty in finding converts, while it has led the world in technological changes which produced social transformations that it had no especial desire to bring about. 5 The reader need not be astonished, therefore, if the Civil War has been interpreted in terms which disguised its broader meaning. If, as some Americans asserted, its chief importance was in putting an end to chattel slavery, this could hardly be regarded as a leading development in the history of Western civilization; for slavery had disappeared from western Europe, except vestigial, while it still flourished in the Americas, and it had disappeared ...

BRUCE CATTON - "THE CIVIL WAR" - AMERICAN HERITAGE PRESS, NEW YORK, 1979

CHARLES SELLERS, HENRY MAY, NEIL R. MCMILLEN - "A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY" - VOLUME TWO, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, BOSTON, 1981

ROBERT PENN WARREN - "THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR" - VINTAGE BOOKS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, NEW YORK, 1975

BERNARD BAILYN, DAVID BRION DAVIS, DAVID HERBERT DONALD - "THE GREAT REPUBLIC, LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY" - BOSTON, 1984

MARY BETH NORTON, DAVID M. KATZMAN, PAUL D. ESCOTT, HOWARD P. CHUDACOFF - "A PEOPLE AND A NATION" - VOLUME I, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, BOSTON, 1988

RICHARD M. KETCHUM - "GREAT HISTORIC PLACES" - AMERICAN HERITAGE PUBLISHING CO. , INC. IN COOPERATION WITH SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC. , NEW YORK, 1987

RALPH HENRY GABRIEL - "THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA, A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES" - VOLUME III, INDEPENDENCE EDITION, NEW YORK, 1989

ARTHUR S. LINK, STANLEY COBEN, ROBERT V. REMINI, DOUGLAS GREENBERG, ROBERT C. MCMATH JR. - "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: A HISTORY" - AHM PUBLISHING CORPORATION, ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILLINOIS 60004, 1990

RICHARD HOFSTADTER, WILLIAM MILLER, DANIEL AARON - "THE UNITED STATES: THE HISTORY OF REPUBLIC" - SECOND EDITION, PRENTICE - HALL, INC. ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NEW JERSEY, 1993

RICHARD HOFSTADTER - "GREAT ISSUES IN AMERICAN HISTORY: FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR, 1765 - 1865" - VINTAGE BOOKS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, NEW YORK, 1990

JOHN SPENCER BASSETT - "MAKERS OF A NEW NATION" - NEW HAVEN, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, TORONTO - GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. , 1987

GILMAN M. OSTRANDER - "A PROFILE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES" - MCGRAW - HILL BOOK COMPANY, NEW YORK, 1991

HOWARD ZINN - "A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES" - HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS, HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK, 1980

RAY ALLEN BILLINGTON - "AMERICAN HISTORY BEFORE 1877" - LITTLEFIELD, ADAMS & CO. , TOTOWA, NEW JERSEY, 1972

PEIRCE LEWIS, ARTHUR MANN, LILLIAN SCHLISSEL, NEIL HARRIS, MAKING AMERICA - "PUBLISHED BY AN INSTITUTE OF STUDY" - NEW YORK, 1985

C. VANN WOODWARD - "A COMPARATIVE APPROACH TO MODERN ENGLISH" - VOICE OF AMERICAN FORUM LECTURES, NEW YORK, 1974

BRYAN OCALLAGHAN - "AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES" - LONGMAN, 1991

GRIGORESCU DAN - "ISTORIA ARTEI AMERICANE" - PUBLISHED BY EDITURA SAECULUM IO. , BUCHAREST, 1997

VIANU ALEXANDRU - "LINCOLN" - PUBLISHED BY EDITURA TINERETULUI, BUCHAREST, 1966

ALMAS DUMITRU - "NORD CONTRA SUD - RAZBOIUL CIVIL DIN STATELE UNITE ALE AMERICII (1861 - 1865)" - PUBLISHED BY EDITURA STIINTIFICA, BUCHAREST, 1965