Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War

by Michael S. Green

This book unravels the political developments that made the Civil War unavoidable.

Politics and America in The Coming of the Civil War examines the developments between 1846 and 1861 that pushed the nation to war to see what they reveal about the North, the South, the people leading them, and the issues separating them.

As shown here, in the decade and a half before the actual outbreak of the war, the mostly southern Democratic Party's fortunes veered from a presidential election victory in 1852 to the shocking loss of Abraham Lincoln in 1860―an event that marked the coming of age of the young antislavery Republican Party. In examining that sharp reversal, Politics and America in Crisis covers a wide range of key events, including efforts to ban slavery in territories won in the Mexican-American War, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raids.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

Reviews

[Hans Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green, as a consensus historian, seeks to minimize the effects of sectional disagreement in the fifteen years proceeding the American Civil War by emphasizing shared commonalities between Northern and Southern Democrats and Whigs. He does, however, admit that the general cause of Civil War was conflict over slavery.