The Second American Revolution

Much of the confusion about a central event in United States history begins with the name: the Civil War. In reality, the Civil War was not merely civil — meaning national — and not merely a war, but instead an international conflict of ideas as well as armies. Its implications transformed the U.S. Constitution and reshaped a world order, as political and economic systems grounded in slavery and empire clashed with the democratic process of republican forms of government. And it spilled over nat