The Civil War marked a legal-epoch divide but did not cause the industrial age

Evidence

The Civil War (1861–​65), bloody and disruptive, was a cataclysmic shock to American society. It is also a convenient dividing point between periods in American legal his­ tory. It is a useful marker of the end of the age of “release of energy”—​the boom period of building and settlement, the period of western expansion and early railroads, when agriculture ruled the economy. The postwar age became an age of factories and big cit­ ies and floods of immigrants from Eastern Europe; an age of technology and industry; an age in which rural America slowly declined. Of course, the Civil War had little or nothing to do with this development; the process had begun before the war, and merely accelerated afterward. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 272

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Legal systems change in response to social and technological shifts — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 118; Unresolved industrial conflicts spilled over into courts and legislatures after the Civil War — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 275; The War on Drugs amplified but did not create drug imprisonment disparities. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 1045

Broader Connections

• The War on Drugs amplified but did not create drug imprisonment disparities. #complicates (0.85) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1045