What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? The United States was destined to have the greatest bloodbath in the country’s history due to the political, social, and cultural issues and attitudes that drove a wedge between America’s North and South. The seeds for this conflict began at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and for the next seventy years, two separate cultures tried to survive and co-exist under one flag and one government as one nation. The United States, under a new form of government, was an experiment that was untested and with such differences, could not bear the pressures of two different cultures that came to be the North and the South. The country tried to co-exist, but it took a war that tested the soul of the country to unite. Take a trip into the past with your instructor, Terry Newton, who will lead you on a journey from Philadelphia to the opening shots in Charleston as we examine the causes, issues and events that lead to the Civil War.