155 years ago, our country was divided. We were on the verge of a civil war between the North and the South that was caused by a disagreement over state’s rights and what freedom truly meant in our country. Slavery was at the center of most of the issues that involved economics and politics. The two halves of our country had to very different industries. The North with manufacturing and growing industrialization, while the South was mostly agriculture which focused on growing cotton and tobacco. One of every seven Americans belonged to another. About four million men, women, and children were slaves. Most of the enslaved worked on the plantations in the South which made the economies of these states dependent on slavery. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, the future of this country was determined. South Carolina seceded from the Union and began the road to the Civil War.
Two years before being elected President, Abraham Lincoln made a speech that essentially told the future of the United States. He said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
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With the look back on that part of our country’s history, we look to the present and realize that our country is divided right now. It may seem like it is just because we share different opinions, but it runs deeper than that. There is a problem within the system that includes institutionalized racism, sexism, class-ism, Islamophobia, and homophobia. This causes the likelihood that some of our voices will not be heard. It took our country a long time to get to where we are today, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still problems that need to be solved, but since our country is so divided, the voices that aren’t being heard are starting to scream.
Black Lives Matter is an activist movement that fights for a systematic change. Their main focus is fighting police brutality and systematic racism. Although this movement is a great one and is doing something that needs to be done, some citizens think that they stand for violence against police. Near the beginning of the movement, there were protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri because of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by the police officer Darren Wilson. Some of these protests resulted in violence because people were taking advantage of the situation that the city was in. As a result, Black Lives Matter has been painted in a way that isn’t their true cause. This is just one of the many things that is dividing our country at the moment.
We are not unified as a country and this year has shown it. Our county as a whole is faced with a difficult decision and the only way we will make the right one is if we come together. We need to look at our country’s history and learn from it. If we do not, we will most likely end up making the same mistake. As one of our country’s greatest presidents has said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
