ABSTRACT
The most studied conflict in pre-twentieth-century history, the American Civil War, arose from the striving of the majority of the states where slavery was practiced to resist what they feared would be an attempt by Abraham Lincoln, the President elected in 1860, to end this slavery. The American Civil War of 1861–5 was far more intense than say the Mexican–American war of 1846–8, or the Crimean War of 1854–6 between Russia and an alliance headed by Britain and France. In practice, the Taiping rebellion prefigured the American Civil War in showing what could be unleashed by an attempt to remould a state. Railways were to play a major role in both the American Civil War and the Wars of German Unification. In contrast, in the Wars of German Unification, the Prussian goals were, although ambitious, to establish a new order of power in Central Europe, also more modest: to defeat Denmark, Austria and France, not to end their independence.
