William Acker of Miami is a sales representative for an automotive parts supplier. But he has always been interested in history, too, considered becoming a historian before deciding he would make more money in business.
Yet William Acker of Miami has a particular interest in the history of Western Civilization, and in particular United States history. As a student at Miami Community College he did extensive research into the American Civil War, and remains interested in the subject to this day. He has personally visited numerous Civil War battlefields, and other places of interest.

"The Civil War was easily the most catastrophic event in the history of the United States," says William Acker of Miami. "More than six hundred thousand lives were lost, which is more than all other American wars put together. The war touched the lives of virtually everyone: nearly every American lost a relative, or a friend, or an acquaintance."

But William Acker of Miami wrote in a term paper that after the Civil War ended, it had the effect of bringing the states closer together. "The United States was more united than ever before," he wrote on the paper, for which he received an A. "The conclusion of the war, with the Union victory, ended the debate over slavery once and for all. This contentious issue had divided the country since the Constitution was drafted in 1787, and in this respect gives the War between the State an air of inevitability, which it probably was."

The Union victory, William Acker of Miami continued, also ended the long-simmering debates over states' rights versus federalism. Southern states had historically interpreted the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as meaning that states had the right to overrule federal law if Congress unconstitutionally. The North, meanwhile, maintained that only the Supreme Court could rule on constitutional matters, and that all states were obligated to obey the Court. So the Union victory in the war settled that matter.

Finally, William Acker of Miami says that the Civil War proved that democracy really can work. Much of the world watched the progress of the war, he wrote in his Miami Community College term paper, and believed that the United States was about to collapse. "But it did not," he concluded, "proving that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."