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Reconstruction Our history has been a bitter one dominated by colonialism, racism, apartheid, sexism and repressive labor policies. The Civil War was perhaps the most momentous event in American history. The survival of the United States as one nation was at risk, and on the outcome of the war depended the nation’s ability to bring to reality the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and human dignity. The war put constitutional government to its severest test as a long festering debate over the power of the federal government versus state rights. Its enormously bloody outcome preserved the Union while releasing not only four million African Americans but also the entire nation from the oppressive weight of our country’s original sin, slavery. On September 22, 1862 President Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It stipulated that anyone in bondage, in states, or parts of states, still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be “thenceforward, and forever free.” What were Lincoln’s intentions? He knew there was virtually no chance that white Southerners would return to the Union just because he had threatened to free their slaves. My theory, the real reason that the war was fought was about expan