Question

give reason how did the American Civil War lead to nation hood

Answer 1

“There is a habit of speaking derisively of going to war for an IDEA—an abstraction—something which you cannot see,” wrote a Southern editor in 1861. “This is precisely the point on which we would go to war. An idea is exactly the thing that we would fight for.” By 1861 ideas about what America was and what it meant to be an American—the essence of nationality—had become elevated to the plain of irreconcilable principles. Civil war was the result.

The nineteenth century was an age of nationalism. Throughout the Western world, this impulse to nationality, vaguely perceived, imprecisely defined, and imperfectly comprehended, was nonetheless strong and pervasive. The United States was fully a part of this process. Indeed, the American Revolution, which brought forth what historians have often hopeful shape to nationalistic aspirations everywhere. The Great Seal of the United States boldly proclaimed this new experiment in republican government a “Novus Ordo Saeclorum,” a new order of the ages. With exhilaration and fear but above all with a missionary determination to make their experiment succeed and stand as a beacon of hope, a city upon a hill, Americans entered upon nationhood, truly believing that in their constitution they had fashioned “a more perfect Union.”

New. Perfect. Exemplary. Yet also incomplete—politically, psychologically, and, of course, geographically. Committed to making their republican experiment succeed and thus occasionally hypersensitive about the possibility of making a misstep, Americans after 1789 saw in almost every political issue grave threats to the new nation. Sometimes these questions were economic (a national bank? a protective tariff? federally funded internal improvements?), sometimes diplomatic (alliances? neutrality? war?), and sometimes philosophical (Should the constitution be strictly or broadly interpreted?). For the most part, the issues in question usually found resolution within a highly competitive two-party system. The one potentially divisive issue, slavery, seemingly had been removed from the political arena by the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which established definite boundaries for slave territory, and by an agreement in Congress to table any petition that addressed the question of emancipation. This “gag rule,” combined with an abiding faith in party politics, reinforced Americans’ confidence in their republican experiment and, in turn, inspired a confidence in the nation’s “Manifest Destiny” to grow and develop.

Answer 2

There is a habit of speaking derisively of going to war for an IDEA—an abstraction—something which you cannot see,” wrote a Southern editor in 1861. “This is precisely the point on which we would go to war. An idea is exactly the thing that we would fight for.” By 1861 ideas about what America was and what it meant to be an American—the essence of nationality—had become elevated to the plain of irreconcilable principles. Civil war was the result.
The nineteenth century was an age of nationalism. Throughout the Western world, this impulse to nationality, vaguely perceived, imprecisely defined, and imperfectly comprehended, was nonetheless strong and pervasive. The United States was fully a part of this process. Indeed, the American Revolution, which brought forth what historians have often hopeful shape to nationalistic aspirations everywhere. The Great Seal of the United States boldly proclaimed this new experiment in republican government a “Novus Ordo Saeclorum,” a new order of the ages. With exhilaration and fear but above all with a missionary determination to make their experiment succeed and stand as a beacon of hope, a city upon a hill, Americans entered upon nationhood, truly believing that in their constitution they had fashioned “a more perfect Union.”