Similarities Between Lincoln And The Second American Revolution

Being one of the most controversial subjects in 19th century America, the argument on slavery led to one of the bloodiest wars in American History. As Southern concern rose on the abolishment of slavery, the secession of the Southern states was inevitable. Centuries later, people argued that the Civil War is described to be the Second American Revolution. In Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James M. McPherson, he assessed on what truly defined a revolution and analyzed the Civil War in its 'external and internal means.' He began with Garfield's statements to discuss that as far as history predicts, the war was necessary for the nation to undergo a revolutionary change. From analyzing this article, the author intended to explain

Garfield. Many radicals like Garfield were known to fight strongly for equal voting rights and equal distribution of land. By including European radicals such as Karl Marx, he mentioned that by the liberation of 4 million slaves, Marx viewed this as a “potentially world transforming ... revolutionary movement.” This version of thinking was also transparent in other European minds such as Thaddeus Stevens. He further takes his analyzation of the Civil War to Charles A. Beard. He employs Bread’s interpretation of the Second American Revolution and shows that the Civil War shared similar aspects of the Puritan Revolution. It can be compared to the Puritan Revolution in the sense that the Northerners attempted to remove the Southerners from power in the government. The author also applied Barrington Moore’s description of the Civil War as the colliding between two class systems and labeled it as “the last Capitalist Revolution.” In Moore’s mind, slavery was an outdated system and prevented the nation from establishing itself to be fully a capitalist democracy. However, several scholars argued that there was no political,

The author mentioned several radicals such as Karl Marx and journalists like Moore and provided the reasoning behind their arguments. I was unaware that this kind of generalization can be made about the Civil War. I found that the battle between class systems to be interesting because it can be compared to many times in history between the proletariat and others. I was convinced that the Civil War can labeled as a Revolution because it produced a social change through violent means. However, I do find it convincing that the second American Revolution is not complete. As the Civil War represented the fight between labor systems and the shift of power, Africans Americans weren’t really free. As an immediate result after the war, they were subjugated to several laws and racism swept the