Events and Politics
The Victorian era began in 1837, with the accession of Britain's Queen Victoria, and endured throughout upheavals such as the American Civil War, until Queen Victoria's death in 1901. Slavery was a major political issue in the early Victorian era in the United States, and a regional one at that, with the American South generally favoring it and the Northeast and Midwest opposing it. The Civil War broke out, at least partially due to this issue, in 1860, and it was a time of awareness and change in American culture. 750,000 Americans died during the war out of a population of 31 million. Among men aged 18–35, about 20% had died by the end of the war. The industrial Northern states defeated the rebellious Southern states, leading to the period called Reconstruction.
Immigration picked up during the Victorian era in America, as dissatisfied Europeans fled the poverty and politics of their homelands for the New World. This led, in turn, to a surge in ethnocentrism and racism, and the forming of ethnic neighborhoods in major cities. The American West, an enormous land sometimes known as the "frontier", attracted settlers. Laws, such as the Homestead Acts, helped Europeans and their descendants take lands used by Native Americans.
Read more about this topic: Victorian America
Famous quotes containing the words events and, events and/or politics:
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
““The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)