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and the North was getting sick of it. Dredd Scott was the black slave of an army officer who accompanied the officer to Ohio, a free-state, and sued for his freedom. In the Dredd-Scott decision, pro-southern Chief Justice Taney ruled that slaves (black persons) were not human beings, and could have no rights. Further, Taney ruled that free-states could not prohibit slavery.

The last straw for the North was the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed southern agents to travel north, hunt down, and forcibly return escaped slaves to their former bondage. This law and a growing disinclination on the part of the Northern citizenry for continued compromise contributed to the formation of the Republican Party in 1856. Stephen Fremont was the first Republican presidential candidate. He lost to Democrat and pro-southerner James Buchanan, whose final year in office of a week and disgraceful presidency was marked by the first seceding southern states.

When "Black Republican" Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election without a single electoral vote from any southern state, the Confederacy welcomed the remainder of the 11 other seceding southern states into its fold, wrote its own constitution, and established its first capital in Alabama, later moving to Richmond, Virginia.

The unfinished business of the United States before the shooting war began was whether slavery could coexist with the democratic principles in a representative Republic. The North would allow slavery to exist where it was; the South wanted the unrestricted spread of that institution into new territories. The North viewed its wealth in growing immigration, urbanization, and industrial growth; the South's major assets were human slaves, and they feared the bankruptcy that would result when the Republicans forcibly abolished slavery.

The second item on the agenda of unfinished business of America was whether any state could dissolve its relationship with the national government and join up with other states who felt the same way. The South believed that the Union was a voluntary arrangement, and that states' rights came before federal authority; the North believed that any government that included the means for its own dissolution was not a government, but an oxymoron. The south had a fair and arguable point; the north had the manpower and weaponry to ensure the continuation of the Union.

The Civil War, then, resolved two issues that caused America to be "unfinished." The slavery question was solved by the Emancipation Proclamation and later amendments to the Constitution. The issue of secession was solved by a four-year blood-bath that left the South in ruins and over a half a million Americans dead.

The War by no means completed us as a nation; that was the unfinished business of the civil rights movement and the growing power of our national government. The War did resolve the problems that, had our founders faced them head on, ironically, we might never had become a Republic to begin with.

Learn more about this author, Jerry Curtis.
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