The Lingering Influence of Revolutionary Political Discourse From the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
Abstract
The Civil War was a seminal moment in the historical development in the United States. The American Revolution may have created the U.S. as a sovereign nation, but the Civil War helped to determine what kind of nation America would become. The Reconstruction era, from Lincoln s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to Hayes s removal of federal troops from the South in 1877, further defined how exactly the U.S. would evolve into the nation that it is today. By examining the attitudes towards the extension of slavery in the pre-war U.S., the decisions taken by the Union and Confederate governments during the course of the war, and the stubbornness and determination demonstrated during the Reconstruction periods, this article explores how a clear pattern of revolution emerges in U.S. political discourse. The move away from a willingness to compromise and the adoption of binary pos