Was 1968 the worst year in American history?

Answer 1

1968 was a pretty horrible year to be in America, what with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, racial tensions escalating and eventually culminating with the 1968 Washington D.C. Riots, as well as the riots at the '68 Democratic convention.

I would go as far to say that 1968 was the worst year in the 20th Century for America. If I had to find the worst year in American history, I'd try looking between 1860 and 1865:

-In 1860, we had a presidential election that ended up being rejected in the deep south, leading to several southern states to secede from the Union.
-1861 saw the formation of the Confederate States of America and the breakout of the American Civil War.
-1862 through 1864 had the worst fighting in all of American history, and in some cases the Western Hemisphere, claiming many thousands of lives (Battles of Shiloh, Seven Days, 2nd Bull Run/Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg in 1862; Battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga in 1863; Battles of The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, Atlanta, 2nd Franklin, and Nashville in 1864.
- In 1865, we had the conclusion of the American Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the latter of which lead incompetance and hostility towards dealing with the former-rebel states, which in trun cased problems in Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction South, the ramifications of which most likely caused many of the racial problems which erupted in 1968.