American Civil War

The American Civil War is properly viewed as a protracted struggle lasting from 1848 to 1876. It was typical of the Nationalist Liberation Movements of the period throughout the Western White world..

Contrary to the revolutionary movements in Europe however, the Confederate rebellion was pacified. In the process, slavery was transformed from an economic issue regarding labor and property into the perennial race issue it remains today.

Europe, on the other hand, had already created a peasant class from its White slaves but also retained much of its hereditary feudal system which had never developed in America.

It was not until the Second World War that agricultural mechanization ended the need for an agricultural working class on either continent.

Resolution of the slavery issue removed the last impediment to America's spectacular territorial westward expansion while Europe could only redraw borders. The Civil War also changed the American way of war from traditional military objectives to reconstructing entire societies even though Southern Reconstruction itself failed.

Phases

The Civil War was fought in three phases.

1848-1860: guerilla war fought over the admittance of western territories as either free or slave labor states.

1860-1865: conventional War of the Rebellion fought to determine the fate of the Union and adjunct slavery.

1863-1876: guerilla war fought over restoring the franchise in the former rebel states and their economic rehabilitation.

In Europe, the Revolutions of 1848 brought about the end of the Holy Alliance which had maintained a conservative peace since Napoleon's Wars and successful independence movements from the Austrian Empire in which international intrigue played a greater role than in America's Civil War although not absent.

Background:

Phase 1: Bleeding Kansas

Between ratification of the U.S Constitution in 1789 and the War of Secession, 20 territories had became states of the Union. Kansas, Nevada and West Virginia became states during the Union pacification, West Virginia seceding from Virginia to rejoin the Union. Another 14 would follow.

Kansas Nebraska Act 1854, 15 territories has become states. Nebraska would be 16 in 1861.

Between 1848 and 1861, Wisconsin,Minesota, Iowa, California and Kansas

John Brown gained national fame as an anti-slavery terrorist in the later years of "Bleeding Kansas" and the Republican Party formed in 1854 from Northern Whigs on the Abolition of Slavery.

Prior to Secession, Whigs and Democrats were both nationally distributed. Whigs advocated pro-business-industry government policy while the Democratic Party, founded in 1828, espoused indiviualism and limited government. Northern Democrats ("Copperheads") ran In fact, Samueal Tilden, Democrat cnadidate in the presidential election of 1876, had been New York State Governor and had organized the Free Soil Party in 1848 which merged with the Republican Party in 1854.

and formation of the Republican Party in 1854 accompanied by guerilla warfare and terrorism in the territories regarding slavery and legislative attempts to maintain a balance between slave and free labor states in Congress.

Phase Two: War of the Rebellion

The second phase erupted from an escalation of the first and the Democrat split ticket resulting in the election of a Republican in 1860,

resulting in Southern secession and a conventional war of pacification with which the Holy Alliance of Europe was familiar. Although the Confederacy immediately declared slavery a war goal, it was Union defeats that finally compelled Republican President Abraham Lincoln to accede to Aboltionsits Karl Marx, Wendell Phillips or Frederick Douglas in January 1863 to arouse the discourgaed pacification into quasi-religious crusade to abolish slavery.

Reconstruction

Reconsruction comprised a failed attempt to social engineer an ossified Southern plantation society and plantation economy with which Yankee former Whigs-burgeosie industrialists had no experience. Initial attempts at Rice Island to implement a burgoesie work contract between Freedmen and Planters failed, Freedmen refusing field labor and insisting upon land redistribution. Contemporary Europe still enforeced the corvee by which tenants paid for subsistance plots in labor and Republicans insisted upon returning the plantations to the Planters reuslting in impasse.

Recontruction proceded in three phases beginning in Military Reconstruction 1863 via army field orders intended only to relieve congregating negroes impeding military logistics.

The presidential phase proceeded when Vice President Andrew Johhson attempted to take over Reconstruction after Lincoln's assassination, April 1865, on a policy of rapid reconciliation requiring only the that the rebel states renounce secession and abolish slavery to be re-admitted the Union, leaving the Freedmen Question to the states.

The third phase began in February 1868 with Radical Republicans frivolousy impeaching Andrew Johnson, who'd run with Lincoln on a National Union Party ticket, and the election of Republican U.S. Grant. Radical Republicans intended racial equality in the South via restricting the White Yeoman and Planter franchise, using Federal troops to suppress guerilla Southern resistance: Ku Klux Klan: Knights of the White Camillia.

Grant persisted until 1876 when he refused to run for re-election. Reconstruction was finally eneded by a back room deal resutling from another wave of violence instigated by Wade Hampton's "Red Shirts" (imitating Italian Graibaldi) in which Democrat Samual Tilden conceded to Republican R.B. Hayes in return for an end to Reconstruction.