What is the Antebellum Period?
The antebellum period in the United States was the time period between the end of the Revolutionary War — 1789 — and the beginning of the American Civil War — 1860. During this time, the US worked to rebuild itself after an arduous war with England, and create an identity for itself. The government was in its infancy and was more state-centralized at the time — individual state governments had more power than the federal government. One of the major reasons that the South seceded from the union at the start of the Civil War was because it felt the federal government was beginning to take too much power away from the states.
