The Passage Of The Kansas Nebraska Act - 1381 Words

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 which allowed for slavery in areas in the Louisiana Purchase, many Northerners banded together to form the Republican Party in opposition to slavery and non-sectionalism. The election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860 caused many southern states to fear the abolition of slavery and its effects upon their livelihood. Lead by South Carolina, most of the southern cotton growing states seceded as well. When the time for war came, the North seemed ready. Five and a half million white Southerners faced a total white population of some twenty million. The Union boasted more than eight out of ten factories, more than 70 percent of railroad mileage, all the†¦show more content†¦In burying forever the notion that the Union was a compact of sovereign states, the war greatly expanded the powers of the national government and made it supreme in the federal system. The war also significantly enlarged pre sidential powers, particularly in wartime (Gineapp). The reconstruction era brought uncertainty to many non-whites in the south, with the formation of groups such as the Klu Klux Klan. The Fifteenth Amendment, an 1870 law that prohibited states from denying anyone the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, spurred the creation of secret white societies in the South. These organizations—the Pale Faces, the Ku Klux Klan, and others—terrorized blacks to keep them from voting, and many blacks were murdered by whites who had no fear of being prosecuted. As these organizations coalesced, their power in Southern communities reached frightening heights (â€Å"Civil War†). During the Civil War, the soldiers of the Confederacy and of the Union often tended to look down upon one another. In order to be able to kill someone, the soldiers had to think of that person as less than human, or else the guilt could be unbearable. After the 1860s, Civil War enthusiasts gave the war a glossy, clean, glorified look and feel. Both the North and the South are often presented as noble men fighting for their way of life against slavery, or for