Irrepressible Conflict or Blundering Generation? The Coming of the Civil War

The Civil War and the years leading up to it are among the most studied periods in American history. Many of the interpretations of the coming of the War may be grouped into one of two major schools of thought: Irrepressible Conflict or Blundering Generation. The Irrepressible Conflict school argues that the North and South were becoming such different societies that they could no longer co-exist in one nation, and war was the inevitable consequence. However, the historians of this school do not all agree on what the crucial differences were between North and South. The Blundering Generation school argues that radically different societies can co-exist without going to war. Instead, a series of mistakes and misjudgments by a “blundering generation” of politicians allowed extremists to dominate, leading eventually to war.

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Political Cartoons of the Lilly Library/The Colonial Years