The following essay is crossposted on the special Civil War
Sesquicentennial website hosted by the University of North
Carolina Press. Vikki Bynum, Moderator Reflections on the
Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War As a historian of the
Southern Civil War home front, I am continually confronted by
the destruction of communities, as well as the deaths on and off
the battlefield, that the Civil War visited upon the United
States. As we commemorate such an important event on its 150th
anniversary, it is important to remind ourselves that our system
of government is capable of stunning failures of leadership as
well as inspiring moments of greatness. A popular sound bite
among our politicians today—one repeated ad nauseam—is that
Congress should no longer “kick the can down the road” in regard
to this problem or that problem. Well, slavery was the “can”
that our antebellum politicians kicked down the road. Slavery
did not emerge suddenly as a problem during the sectional crisis
of the 1850s, it was a problem