During the period from 1870 to 1980, the United States developed a distinctive national culture.
Evaluate the relative importance of the causes of the growth of a national culture in the United States from 1870 to 1980.
SAMPLE ESSAY
Prior to the Civil War the United States consisted of a fragmented mosaic of regional communities. For example, New England and the Deep South both had distinctive regional identities. The Southern way of life featured a plantation economy based upon slavery while the New England way of life featured Puritan values and the beginning of an industrial revolution based upon factories and wage labor. During the century following the Civil War a combination of shared national crises, the creation of a standardized consumer economy, and the development of mass media galvanized a unified national identity. Although national emergencies such as the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II played important unifying roles, in the end the relentless expansion of mass consumerism and mass communications served as the primary causes of a shared national culture in the United States.
