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Blundering Generation

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Running Head: BLUNDERING GENERATION 1 The “Blundering Generation” in the Civil War Camila Alvarez AP U.S. History Period 2 BLUNDERING GENERATION Abstract This paper explores the term coined by James G. Randall on 1940 “Blundering Generation”, which encompasses the “real” reasons that lead to the Civil War and blames the political leaders of the Era, the mistakes they made, their inability to compromise, and the way the Civil War was actually, and probably still is, romanticized (The Blundering Generation Revisited). Throughout the essay, I will analyze some of the events that justify Randall’s term, showing some key moments when politicians from the 19th century could have compromised and perhaps prevented the …show more content…

So once again, the wanted peace didn’t last much longer as the Compromise was never endorsed by proslavery appointees. According to Henretta 2011 and U.S History, the Kansas-Nebraska act was a great political disaster for the political system of America, and was a strong, if not the leading, cause of the Civil War. Senator Stephen A. Douglas was behind said compromise. He wanted the territory known as Nebraska to decide whether or not it wanted to be a slave state, but, like mentioned before, the Missouri Act would be violated by such decision. Knowing this, Senator Douglas revised his bill and added that the Missouri Compromised should be repealed, and that popular sovereignty should decide the fate of the new territory, which would be formed as Nebraska and Kansas. When the Act was finally enacted, the disaster began. Northern Whigs and “anti-Nebraska” Democrats were enraged and opposed with passion to the act, denouncing it BLUNDERING GENERATION 5 many times. As a result, it destroyed the Whig Party, and was on the verge of finishing off the Democrats. Some of these abolitionists joined a new Republican Party (Henretta 2011). Of course this event places Senator Douglas as part of the Blundering Generation, because of his pursuing of his own partisan purposes which were to “perpetuate his party and his own political career” (The Fate of Their Country, Michael F. Holt,

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