The time was April

The time was April, 1861. The nation , which was founded less than a century ago by her founders with the dream of becoming “a shining city upon the hill” and whose constitution talked about ensuring “liberty , equality and pursuit of happiness” for all its citizens , was going through a turning point in history. It was the day of reckoning. The nation had seen her own citizens bitterly divided amongst themselves fighting over an issue which threatened to destroy everything that the founders of the nation had hoped for.

This was the story of the American civil war in 1861. The issue that bitterly divided the two sides was slavery. There were deep conflicts of interests present underneath the issue of slavery between the belligerents i.e. the Northern and the Southern American states.

The North was dependent upon industries henceforth what it wanted was cheap labor for its factories and mills whereas the south which was proud of its cotton and sugar firms wanted its slaves for maintaining all those firms.

There was another major difference between the two sides; the south saw slaves as properties which can be used as pleased by their masters whereas the north saw the slaves as potential source of cheap labors. The north wanted to free the slaves from South by abolishing slavery and put them into the factories of the Northern states as cheap labors. The North also viewed the slave-labor dependent south as backward and hostile to its interests. The South considered their holding of slaves as god-given right and they were ready to fight and even secede from the American Union in order to hold onto their rights.

What is interesting here is that both the Southern as well as Northern states did choose their leaders through popular elections and thus both could be considered as democracies. Thus the civil war could be considered as “a war between the two democracies.”

So we can deduce that American civil war happened because two different sections of America had business interests which were deeply in conflict with each other

Now let us turn our clocks back to America of April, 2011. We can see the country is going through an economic recession period. For understandable business reasons the American business community has preferred to bring in chip labor forces from outside the United States. This means that the business community in the United States have become the greatest proponents of business improvement measures like immigration and outsourcing. The resident nationalist American groups who feel their jobs and lifestyles are being threatened with the arrival of people whom they consider represent an alien culture are up in arms against it. The Nationalist American groups oppose immigration since they feel not only their jobs but their very identities are under thereat from what they consider “alien lifestyles.”

Some of the recent political events like the Tea party movement as well as the recent legislations passed by American states of Arizona and Georgia for greater profiling of potential immigrants indicate that there is growing divide between the American business communities and the nationalist communities.

So what we can understand that the current socio-political situation in America is not too dissimilar to that of events leading up to 1861. Just replace the word “slavery” with the word “immigration” and you will understand that they situation is not too dissimilar to that of the month of august, 150 years ago. What we lack is a catalyst like John Brown’s raids in Virginia or the event in Fort Sumter which may act as a spark that may produce a completely unforeseen chain of events.