if you're from The Real World you've probably discovered by now that everything in life eventually breaks I don't care what it is the first car you'll drive one day upon getting your license or the iPhone 27 you're hoping to Own by age 50 whatever it is it's going to give way take those fancy schmancy reusable grocery bags that can keep all sorts of paper and plastic out of the landfill when you first use them they're great they can carry pounds and pounds of fresh groceries like it's no problem but over time as the weeks go by and you take trip after trip the threads that hold the straps to the bag start to wear and even to tear and then one fateful day in the future before you know what's happened the bag's going to give way and send all your precious groceries to their demise on a dirty floor now if you think I'm being pessimistic you're probably right and I hope this never happens to you but I bring it up because we're getting now into the story of how our own country much like the grocery bag came apart almost 100 years after this country came to be the Civil War exploded into action in the year 1861 claiming more than 600,000 American lives over four years of fighting it was a terrible and bloody time as the nation was split in two and States from the North and South fought against each other ferociously what could possibly bring a nation like ours to the brink of This Disaster you might ask the same thing that accounts for the broken fancy schmancy grocery bag and that's a combination of time and pressure in the United States it was differences between the northern and southern ways of life that created pressure and with time that pressure caused the nation to burst at its seams one big difference between North and South was the way each region made its money factories and railroads drove the economy in the north while plantations and Farms growing cash crops like cotton and tobacco generated income in the South another big difference between North and South was who supplied the labor or did the work in the South it was millions of enslaved men women and children who were forced to work for no pay in the north countless immigrants from across the ocean came to America of their own choosing and chose to work jobs in the factories and on the railroads for which they would be paid yet another difference was the way each region used its political power the 1800s were season of growth in which many new states were being welcomed into the country the north wanted more free states where slavery would be prohibited while the South wanted more slave states where slavery would be allowed each side was concerned that the other would become more powerful each side fought to increase its interests both sides wound up making a series of compromis or agreements in which each half got a little bit of what they wanted finally people in the North and South had very different beliefs about Freedom if you were an enslaved person in the south at this time the only way you could be truly totally free was to escape to Canada while some Northerners were just as racist as their southern neighbors others who believed deeply in the freedom of all people used a top secret Travel network nicknamed the Underground Railroad road to help enslaved people escape to Freedom unfortunately if southern slave catchers as they were called could reach these runaways before they made it to Canada they were allowed by the US government to take them back into captivity where they believed they belonged the whole Southern way of life could fall apart if these people were allowed to be free for years the pressure Rose until finally in 1860 things officially fell apart a man named Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States and Southerners feared that he would directly attack their way of life and outlaw slavery and so just like that a group of Southern States decided to secede or withdraw from the United States of America forming their own country called the Confederate States of America this should remind you of the way that the American colonists almost 100 years ago seceded from Great Britain upset by this decis decision the northern states also known as the union would fight for the next four years to keep the Southern States from leaving while the southern states also known as the Confederacy would fight to defend their right to leave little did either side know just how catastrophic the Bloodshed would be in that Great War the product of time and pressure