American Identity Essay Research Paper The American — страница 3

union weakened as politics took issue. There were two types of governments, the aristocratic government and the democratic government. Aristocracy is a hierarchical, elitist, traditional idea. A democracy is mobile, equalitarian and future oriented. America had its first recession in 1819 and the aristocratic government did not help. People realized they must elect a common man. This separated the rich from the poor. One political issue that the south opposed was the Missouri Compromise. Many settlers in Missouri were from the south. When it warranted an admission to the Union as a state it was expected to become a slave state, however did not become one. The Kansas-Nebraska act changed this. The bill was reported in 1854 and contained the provision that the question of slavery

should be left to the decision of the territorial settlers themselves. This angered the North because with southerners expanded quicker than the northerners, slavery was sure to spread. These acts aided in destroying the ?American identity? that was never fully established. A major political event that separated the Union was when Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. He was from the north and he opposed slavery. This caused South Carolina to secede from the Union. Seven other states left the Union, formed a new government, and took over federal property; eight slaveholding states dangerously walked a tightrope between Union and secession; the Buchanan administration, after surrendering the loss of most federal posts, held firm at Forts Sumter; proposals to resolve the

crisis and provide a means for the peaceable reconstruction of the country started, but never happened. This is the early beginning of the Civil War. When the English settlers first came to the new land they had ideas of establishing their own lives in their own country. It would be based on freedom, understanding, and unity. They wanted to establish an ?American identity?. As their voracity and greed for money and land took over, they forgot how to listen to others and compromise in order to come together as one identity. The North and the South grew apart and became very different from each other. The Northeast captured its own identity because it represented modernization and the future. The West tried to form an identity by trying to keep up with the Northern movement. The

South openly resisted modernization due to slavery. It probably could be argued that the United States formed an identity between 1776 and 1861. With these statements presented above it seems to prove the decline of any unity and common identity for the United States as a whole.