The institutions and ideology of a plantation society and a slave system that had dominated half the country before 1861 and sought to dominate more went down with a great crash in 1865. They were replaced by the institutions and ideology of free-labor entrepreneurial capitalism. Writing eight years after the war, Mark Twain said it best: the great conflict "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." At the same time, however, the war left the South impoverished for those three generations, its agricultural economy in shambles, and the freed slaves in a limbo of second-class citizenship. America's postwar economic growth not only excluded the South, but also created new problems of air and water pollution, wasteful exploitation of natural resources, and the travails of an urban-industrial society. For better or for worse, the flames of Civil War forged the framework of modern America. The struggle to define America continues, and all paths to understanding this struggle pass through the cauldron of that conflict. The 75 National Park Service battlefields and other Civil War sites preserve many parts of those paths, which can be followed with enhanced understanding by visiting these sites.
This essay is taken from The The Civil War published by the National Park Service and Eastern National. This richly illustrated handbook is available in many national park bookstores or may be purchased online from Eastern at www.eparks.com/store
