Please copy down and respond to the following.
Which school of thought do
you most identify with?
Pick Your School….of Thought!
The Civil War –
Repressible or Irrespressible?
From The American Pageant, pgs. 432-433
The Schools
1.
Nationalist School (Rhodes)
▪ Slavery caused the Civil War.
▪ Northern-oriented historians credited the conflict
with ending slavery and preserving union
2.
Progressive School (Beard)
▪ The war was not fought over slavery per se.
▪ It was a deeply rooted economic struggle
between an industrial North and an agricultural
South.
3.
Post-World War I School (Randall and Craven)
▪ The Civil War was a “repressible conflict” – neither
slavery nor economic differences between the
North and the South were sufficient causes.
▪ The war was the result of the breakdown of
political institutions, the passion of overzealous
reformers, and the ineptitude of a blundering
generation of political leaders.
4.
Post-World War II School (Nevins, Potter, Foner,
Genovese)
▪ A neo-nationalist view – irreconcilable differences
in morality, politics, culture, social values, and
economics eroded the ties between the sections
▪ northern factory system v. southern labor system
and the virtue of the “free labor ideology”
5.
Ethnocultural School (Holt)
▪ Acknowledges the significance of the collapse
of the established two- party system.
▪ Before the 1850s, national parties focused on
the tariff, banking, and internal improvements,
thereby muting sectional differences over
slavery.
▪ Therefore, the traditional party system resulted
in consensus between the two parties on
almost all national issues other than slavery.
▪ As such, slavery rose to fore and encouraged
sectional or regional powers.