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The English Corner: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF USA. FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO ROOSEVELT.
06.11.10 - Escrito por: Alex García Rosal
 We are about to observe the birth of a nation. It was during this period of time that the United States developed to such an extent as to become the powerful nation it is nowadays.
In the 2nd half of the 19th century, the key issue is the American Civil War. The ensuing outbreak of the armed hostilities was the result of decades of friction between the North and the South and their economies. The North economy was based on manufactured goods, free labour. But the South economy depended on plantations of cotton and tobacco and its system of labour was based on slavery. The conflict started in the 40´s when the North questioned the role of the new Western States in relation to slavery.
There was a great difference between the New England Colony which was Puritan and fostered ideas of individualism and egalitarianism and the Colony of Virginia which was not a congregational theocracy but an Anglican plantation aristocracy.
The outbreak of the conflict took place in 1860. After the election in which Lincoln, the antislavery candidate for the Republican party took office.
The South laid siege to fort Sumpter in Charleston and the southern states joined in a provisional government, the Confederate States of America.
Lincoln, in his inaugural address asserted that he would not take any measures against slavery but the North and South could not be separated. His instance in the conflict separation-union was ambivalent. He even asserted that “a man and his wife may divorce but he North and the South cannot do this”.
He tried to stop the conflict as far as he was able, because his interest in the Union was not only political and economical but most of all emotional.
In spite of his inaugural address to the American people he could not stop the conflict and the South launched an attack at Fort Sumpter in 1861. It was then when Lincoln called upon volunteers to face the ensuing Civil War.
This was due to some key issues in the 2nd half of the 19th century
- Tragedy of the native Americans
- Railroad, from a regional to a national economy
- Corporations
- Mechanization of the agriculture
- Demographic explotion
- The Fate of the Blacks
- New era, a different nation
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