Congratulations! You have successfully sifted through forty years of history and created a cohesive understanding of the important events that occurred between 1820 and 1860. Unfortunately, what you found was an increasingly turbulent and conflicted country, spiraling quickly toward war.
After President Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, many Southerners decided that their Constitutional rights were no longer being protected by the federal government of the United States. They decided that it was time for them to declare their independence from the Union and decide important social, political, and economic issues for themselves, within the boundaries of their own state.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Before long, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had also declared their independence. The Civil War had begun...
The differing perspectives of Americans are an interesting part of the Civil War. Ordinary Americans felt strongly enough about the issues you examined in this webquest to risk their lives defending their position. The websites below offer some further information on the Civil War. They particularly focus on Northern and Southern perspectives. At the end of our study of this war, we will examine these perspectives and attempt to make sense of the bloody conflict that tore our nation apart. Feel free to explore these websites on your own to see what the war meant to "ordinary" Americans.
This is an excellent site about Ken Burn's PBS documentary of the Civil War:
This website is obviously from one particular perspective, and offers an interesting look at how Americans still understand the Civil War from different points of view:
This website compares two different communities during the Civil War:
Some other useful or interesting sites: