THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: Origins and Legacies

In an era where Confederate nationalism has made a resurgence, and the nation is reconsidering the legacies of the U.S.'s bloodiest war, it is essential to stop and investigate the origins and legacies of the Civil War.  How did the nation get to the point of Americans taking up arms against fellow Americans, and was the conflict inevitable from the beginning of the American experiment? What are the various lessons learned from the bloodshed, and who decides what those lessons are? In what ways does the war continue to reverberate in contemporary society and politics?  This course will consider the impending civil conflict from the earliest periods of American Colonialism to the Civil War era. Additionally, the course will examine how the war influenced and shaped events in the post-war years, throughout the twentieth century, to today.