It's worth remembering that the civil war was a slave revolt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWiM00lCRTE
Slaves started liberating themselves and a few radical white folks decided to help. This challenged the very legitimacy of the state.
The Northern response was to neutralize the threat by killing or allowing the most radical elements to be killed, then compromising with the remaining resistance. The South thought that this strategy wasn't radical enough, so their repose was to increase violence against the oppressed. Because the North wouldn't also increase violence, the South first secedeed so they could increase violence without Northern restriction, then, not believing that to be enough, attacked the North.
The modern US is a synthesis of these two strategies. We saw this immediately after the assassination of Lincoln, with Southern slavers rolling back gains made during the civil war as far as possible. This became the second phase of American slavery, which lasted until WWII. As a reminder, we are in the 3rd phase of American slavery since it remains legal as long as a person can be compelled to admit to a crime.
Every 4 years we get to choose a government that exercises one of these two strategies: eliminate radicals and compromise with moderates, or unrestricted class warfare on the population. The slave revolt was a third option: direct action.
It turns out, direct action gets the goods.
