The year: 1859
The Union took the worst possible course with "reconstruction": it placated and allowed the rot to persist, grow and self-govern again while having equal voice so quickly to states that didn't attempt to secede. The north should have either just let the south secede, or finished the job with a full-scale cultural annihilation that would have taken decades. We have been fighting the civil war since 1860, the civil rights movement a major battle but have now ceded government power to a group who wants to finally kill the union and get revenge on those terrible folks who took away their slave labor.