Federalism In America

Federalism is defined as a type of government where power is separated between a national government (federal) and various regional governments. Federalism has played a key role in numerous crucial situations the American nation had to endure. It was fully introduced to the United States in the year 1789 and gradually extended its concepts and ideas throughout the nation which came to be known as the federalist period. Two time periods in the course of United States history in which federalism caused great debate were the American Civil War and the reconstruction of The Unites States after the Civil War.

To begin with, the Civil War was the result of extremism on both Northern and Southern parts. The American Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865 was a conflict between the Federal government and eleven slave states in the South who declared their secession from the Union and became the Confederate States, led by President Jefferson Davis. One major argument between the two sides of this national conflict was that the North rejected any rights of secession of the Southern States. The secession of the South was caused by the slave disagreements between the slave-owning South and increasing anti-slavery North. The South feared that they would lose control in the federal government to the anti-slavery forces of the North, and the Northerners feared that the "slave power" had already controlled the government. The North and South each exaggerated their views of slavery (both of which were somewhat based on fiction and somewhat factious). To southerners, it seemed as if they were being betrayed by the rest of the Union and saw slaves as happy and content simpletons, while the North felt that the South was inhumanely selling, buying, working, beating, and breeding people as if they were animals. Federalism was very critical in the time period of the Civil War and in the years just before it started because the United States was challenged to balance the power between the states and the national government during a time of increasing tension over different social and economic systems in the North