The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era

by Allen C. Guelzo

Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
A Nation Announcing Itself
The Disillusion of Compromise
From Debate to Civil War
Sullen Hymns of Defeat
Elusive Victories
The Soldier's Tale
The Manufacture of War
Uear That Trembled
World Turned Upside Down
Stalemate & Triumph
A Dim Shore Ahead
Epilogue
Index
Photographs

Genres: History

447 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953) is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program.

Reviews

[Alex Sarmiento · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent reference work on this era of American history. Very helpful bibliographic section for each chapter. Masterfully written.

[Colby]

"The Mississippi is well worth reading about," wrote Mark twain in the opening lines of Life on the Mississippi. "It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. "For Twain , who was born beside it and worked upon it, most of that remarkableness was a matter of the colorful characters who populated the river, the clusters of peculiar towns along its banks, and the eccentricities of the broad, slow-winding river itself. For foreign travelers in the South it was the vast cross – section of life it contained that regularly left their mouths agape. When William Howard Russell arrived in Memphis, he was bewildered by how the river embraced "this strange kaleidoscope of Negroes and whites, of extremes of civilization and its American development… of enormous steamers on the river, which bears equally the dug-out or canoe of the black fisherman" and "all the phenomena of active commercial life… included in the same scope of vision which takes in at the other side of the Mississippi lands scarcely settled." The Mississippi was almost more than a river: As Twain remembered it, the Mississippi was the "great Mississippi, the majestic, the Majestic Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun."

[John Richley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read from a great historian and author. Guelzo is one of my favorites.