A Country Divided: The Path to the Civil War

Newly elected president Zachary Taylor had a political crisis waiting for him when he took office in 1849. A Swiss immigrant named John A. Sutter discovered flakes of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California in the winter of 1848, and by January of 1849 Americans were pouring into the territory looking to cash in on the Gold Rush. The rapid influx of settlers brought the free soil debate back to life. The “forty-niners” had all …

…or “matter-of-fact.” After the Civil War, racism became very ugly and very personal. The Civil War is similar to World War II in the context that both wars were consequences of an earlier action. I believe that had we abolished slavery seventy years before when it first became an issue, the south would have had no reason to secede. Thus, history was doomed to repeat itself. But, as they say, hindsight is always twenty/twenty.