The epigraph at the top of this chapter, from a poem by James Russell Lowell, refers to the crisis caused by slavery in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. James Russell Lowell was an abolitionist who saw slavery as a moral evil and as presenting a political and economic crisis. Eventually, this crisis led to the US Civil War and a transformation in US society. Some have called it the second American Revolution. The world outside the United States also faced crises, as testified by the revolts of 1848. The world of the twenty-first century also faces a present crisis.