Calhoun's statement reflects much of the sectionalism that preceded the Civil War. The belief at the time was that the North and South took different paths towards achieving identify in the modern conception of America. Now that the threats from the British had been eliminated once and for all after the War of 1812, America was free to advance into the 19th century. Yet, America sought different ways to express this identity. The South, with its agrarian and binding to "tradition," represented one narrative of expression and the North, with factories and industrialization, represented another. Leading into the Civil War, both sections of the nation did not foresee nor seek to acknowledge the invariable level of differences between the two. At some point, both sides seemed to delay the inevitable that a conflict was present, which is where Lincoln's statement acquires so much importance for he realized at an early point that both notions of the good cannot exist in the American nation.
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