In this assignment, I found that there were several issues that were recurrent themes within the Union as well as the South. The differences were in the beliefs of the respective sides. In the assigned reading, it is readily apparent how the themes related to the nature of Northern and Southern society or the Civil War.
             The first theme is secession. The ideas on secession varied in the North and South and, were in fact, usually polar opposites on the respective sides. The secession of the Southern states is central to this chapter of American History.
             In the North, people were concerned about the secession movement. When Lincoln gave his inaugural address, he addressed the Northern concerns. "It follows from these views that no state upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union: that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances." Lincoln went on to state, "Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.
             Lincoln said that the South was the minority and the minority could not make the rules that would affect the majority. "The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left...." Lincoln also warned of the consequences of secession and how it would affect the seceding parties. "If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority...."
             George Templeton tells in his account, "The Outbreak of War Galvanizes New York City," about the common peoples reactions to the...