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 Germany, Italy and Hungary however, the Confederate rebellion was pacified. In the process, slavery was transformed from an economic issue regarding labor and property into the perenial race issue it remains today.
Europe, on the other hand, had already created a peasant class from its White slaves but 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 expansion while Europe could expand only via "blue water" empire. It also changed the American way of war from traditional objectives to reconstructing entire societies even though Southern Reconstruction itself failed.
The Civil War was fought in three phases. Beginning with the Free Soil Movement in 1848, guerilla warfare escalated over the admittance of western territories as either free or slave labor states through absorption of the Free Soilers into the Republican Party in 1854, John Brown's Raid and the election of a Republican president iin 1860 whereupon seven states seceded. President Lincoln sent troops to secure Federal property and the South Carolina militia bombarded Fort Sumter initiating a conventional war of rebellion lasting until in 1865 in which Lincoln made the aboltion of slavery adjunct to pacification. Reconstruction began in 1863 as Union armies penetrated the Confederacy and were forced to improvise policy regarding Freedmen who were impeding military movments. Vice President Andrew Johnson took over Reconstruction following Confederate surrender and Lincoln's assassination, attempting to restore full rights on the basis of simple renunciation of secession and abolishing slavery. which was de facto fait accompli. Radical Republicans impeached Johnson in order to impose racial equality by White voter suppression resulting in two waves of Southern gueriila warfare organized largley by veteran rifle clubs into the Ku Klux Klan, Knights of the White Camillia and later, Wade Hampton's "Red Shits" reulting in a contested election in 1876. By this time, even hard core Abolionists conceded that the industrial North could not resusitate the agrarian Southern economy and Reconstruction ended in back room deal in exchange for a blase Republican president.
Background:
Phase 1: Bleeding Kansas
Between ratification of the U.S Constitution in 1789 and the Kansas Nebraska Act 1854, 15 territories has become states amid escalating violence over slavery. Nebraska would be 16 in 1861[1].
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.