Conflict over the place of black Americans was incipiently present in what would become the United States, if not from the moment when European settlers arrived, then certainly from the moment they brought African slaves to join them. Issues of civil rights, and conflicts over race policy, were to flare intermittently in all the years thereafter. In a different way, conflict over cultural values was likewise incipiently present from the beginning, breaking through and dominating politics at some periods while remaining comparatively quiescent at others. Many of the original settlers were simply seeking a better economic life, even if it required transnational uprooting and a leap off into the wilderness. For many others, however, a better life meant political and especially religious freedom, so that the values governing public policy were central to their presence on the American continent.

These values – How ought people to live? – were widely articulated and debated at the time of the American Revolution. They were rearticulated as storm clouds began to gather for the American Civil War. Yet the late nineteenth century was probably the great period of cultural conflict, at least before the modern era. The Civil War established that there would be one nation within the former boundaries of the United States, with the ability to make policy for all of it. The industrial revolution, but especially the massive immigration that was part and parcel of it, then drove questions of social policy to the center of the policymaking process.