i don’t disagree. the american civil war is the tent pole event through which all other analysis of american history needs to be analyzed. certain lefty folks will tell you it’s the great depression but i think that’s fundamentally just examining american history through the lens of when the poverty of the southern tidewater finally reached the northern cities. yes, brown and black people were hit harder by the great depression, so the great depression is still a useful tent pole, however the missing context of why brown and black people didn’t have as many protections from poverty is very important, and that reason is that by not enforcing reckoning against the wealthy elites who enacted the civil war to continue owning people, every enforcement of poverty in the tidewater was allowed to repeat