Racial Tensions 19th Century

The 19th century was a time of rapid change and modernization of the world through quite possibly the most impactful economic movement in human history, the form of the Industrial Revolution. Coming out of the 18th century, which saw Enlightenment ideas flourish into actual Constitutions of rapidly rising nations, the 19th century saw the infant mortality rate drop rapidly and population growth boom due to findings such as the first vaccine, not using leeches to treat disease, as well as a variety of other medical feats. However, even though strides were being made in some fields, the 19th century’s idea of progress was not beneficial to all who lived in it. Due to the rapid growth of the economies of rising nation-states and the diversification
Due to the bitter conditions that the lower class had to live through, many gravitated toward these ideas. Another major tension aggravated in the 19th century was racial tension, seen with the development of racial segregation and racial competition. One of the most clear examples of racial tension building in the 19th century was in the United States. In the 19th century, the United States was a young and divided nation and after a bloody civil war, the nation was destroyed. However, the future was bright in the hands of Lincoln, who set out to fix the years of racial tension that existed in the US. Despite that, John Wilkes Booth ended this dream, which left the future of the United States in the Southern sympathizer’s hands of Andrew Johnson. Johnson did everything in his power to oppose the new 14th amendment and under his leadership allowed for the festering of Black Codes and the KKK, culminating in the Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in some states. Furthermore, racial tensions were not just between African Americans and Whites, but between Asian Americans and Whites