The Civil War constitutes one of the most original episode of the American History. The half of all the American losses happened during these four bloody years (630000 against 680000). One American out of thirty die during this war. But above all, and maybe more than the Frontier Myth, it was a moment when the United States identity got more accurately defined, when America really entered a new era. Only the Black Thursday, Pearl Harbor or the September 11th could compete with the seizure Fort Sumter as the most important event in the American History. But how contingent was this war Did the economical trends were unavoidably lead to the war, like all the Marxist tradition developed it
             When London acknowledges its defeat and the Independence of the recent born United States of America, the country is really divided and one can feel more New-Yorker or Virginian than "American" a still anachronic notion. The main line of opposition lied between the Northern and the Southern States, approximately between Maryland and Pennsylvania (the Mason-Dixon line), the District of Columbia being like a bridge between two worlds that everything opposes.
             The economic systems of course. The southern states have developed an economy based on the cultivation of exports products, tobacco, sugar cane, but from the 1830's mostly cotton, supplying the European markets, discovering one after the other the joys of Industrial Revolution. This system, who shaped the social structures, could only survive with a low-cost workforce, the black slaves. On the other hand, the northern states, heirs of the puritan settlers and of their ethic who allowed the birth of capitalism, to follow the famous thesis of Max Weber, began to enter the industrial era, with values, like competition, freedom of business. Two so different production systems provoked deep divergences at the federal level, about the Trade policy for instance, the North willing closed borders in order t...