Program 10: The Coming of the Civil War
Donald L. Miller with Pauline Maier, Waldo E. Martin, Jr., and Stephen
Ambrose
Introduction
Miller: Manifest Destiny. The belief that it is God's will for America
to expand in the Pacific, a belief common to both North and South.
Maier: I mean, if you think about it, there are far more bonds holding
the South to the rest of the nation by the middle of the 19th century than
there were at the end of the 18th. Certainly they have these common
traditions.
Martin: It strikes me that one of the things that's happening is
Manifest Destiny, a whole creation of the nation as the nation in the 19th
Century.
Maier: Racism holds the nation together in some utterly bizarre way. It
isn't something which divides North and South; it's something which binds them
together.
Miller: Differences overwhelm common bonds. Today on A Biography of
America, "The Coming of the Civil War".
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