In the year 2020, and at a time when preparations are being made for the upcoming presidential elections in America, it is common to say that the United States has become more politically and culturally divided than ever before, but some historians believe that the current divisions in American society are faded and very limited compared to the events of the mid-19th century .

In a tweet on Twitter at the end of last year, US President Donald Trump quoted a warning indicating a possible crack in the United States more like a "civil war", if Democrats succeeded in removing him from office.

As a historian who studied and wrote about the Civil War era, University of Virginia history professor Gary W. Gallagher says that the American nation and society literally disintegrated between the election of the 16th President of the United States of America Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 and the surrender of the Confederate army led by General Robert Edward Lee in April 1865.

More than three million men took up arms, and hundreds of thousands of black and white civilians in the states of the Confederacy (present-day southern United States of America) became refugees. During this period, four million African-Americans enslaved were freed from slavery.

After the war ended, the country soon entered into a decade of violent disagreement over the best way to organize society, and Gallagher considers that comparing any current division in past years with this tragic turmoil is a lack of understanding of American history, according to his article published in the "Konferration".

Beating and assassination
Some examples illustrate the profound difference between the divisions during the civil war, and those present and recent past.

Notable actors often use award ceremonies as a platform to express dissatisfaction with current political leaders, but on April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth, one of the most famous actors in the United States, expressed his dissatisfaction with Abraham Lincoln by shooting him in the back his head.

Today, Americans regularly hear and watch members of Congress criticize each other during congressional hearings and elsewhere, but on May 22, 1856, US Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in a bloody fashion on the floor of the Senate floor Against the background of the position of slavery.

As the recent elections in America sparked controversy about the possibility of Texas or California separating from the rest of the country, after the election of a Republican president in 1860, seven states of slaves were effectively separated between December 20 and February 1, 1861. Four of them followed. The remaining eight states of slaves were between April and June 1861.

Angry war
Thus the Americans faced the fact that the political system created by the founding generation failed to manage fractures and internal divisions, and made the "United States" in the north, and the newly established "Confederation" in the south engage in an open and bloody war.

The scale of the ensuing fighting confirms the incorrectness of allegations that the United States is now more divided than ever, according to Gallagher, a professor of American Civil War history who says that "there is no political issue in 2020 that can be compared to the issue of slavery in the mid-19th century in terms of division." .

And four years of civil war resulted in at least 620,000 people, equivalent to about 6.5 million people in the United States in 2020 compared to the population.

The institution and spread of slavery was the key to this massacre, as it sparked a series of crises that ultimately proved insoluble.

American Civil War
Between 1861 and 1865, Union forces (the United States) faced separatists from 11 southern states who came together to form the Confederate States of America, and Union forces triumphed at the end of the bloodiest war in American history.

At the beginning of 1861, seven southern states - supporting the slave system and keeping slaves, and their economies relying on forced labor farmers - announced their secession from the United States, attacking the forts of the north, the emerging confederation expanded to include 11 states, and the Confederates demanded two additional border states.

In the spring of 1865 the war ended with the surrender of all Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government.