Civil War to Civil Rights: An Action Plan for the Midwest Region of the National Park Service to Commemorate the Sesquicentennial of America’s Civil War

One hundred and fifty years after it began the American Civil War remains a pivotal event in our nation’s history that continues to touch our lives today. On the eve of war, America stood at the confluence of differing ideas of freedom, equality, opportunity, and expansion that threatened the young nation’s very existence. Where two powerful rivers meet the turbulence can be frightening as each seeks to dominate the other until eventually they become one. By the mid-nineteenth century, the North and South—built on the same ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality—clashed in a devastating war that would determine whether the nation would remain united, and which view of freedom would emerge victorious. For people living on lands bordered by the major rivers that merge into the Mississippi—the Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red Rivers—the Civil War presented immediate and distinctly personal tensions. Nowhere in the country did the issues of slavery and its expansion cause more compromise, conflict, and change than in the area where these rivers meet. Westward expansion presented opportunities for white settlers, at the expense of the American Indians who called these lands home for generations, or who had been forcibly moved here with the promise of keeping them in perpetuity. In addition, many of these white settlers brought their “property” with them— enslaved men, women and children. Others wanted to limit the expansion of slavery into the territories. Both groups were willing to fight to defend what they believed were their constitutional rights.