The Road to Disunion : Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861

Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject. "This sure-to-be-lasting work--studded with pen portraits and consistently astute in its appraisal of the subtle cultural and geographic variations in the region--adds crucial layers to scholarship on the origins of America's bloodiest conflict."--The Atlantic Monthly"Splendid, painstaking account...and so a work of history reaches into the past to illuminate the present. It is light we need, and we owe Freehling a debt for shedding it."--Washington Post"A masterful, dramatic, breathtakingly detailed narrative."--The Baltimore Sun 0195058151......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Illustrations......Page 11 Maps......Page 12 Preface......Page 13 Prologue: Yancey’s Rage......Page 20 PART I: BETTER ECONOMIC TIMES GENERATE WORSE DEMOCRATIC DILEMMAS......Page 26 1. Democracy and Despotism, 1776–1854: Road, Volume I, Revisited......Page 28 2. Economic Bonanza, 1850–1860......Page 38 PART II: THE CLIMACTIC IDEOLOGICAL FRUSTRATIONS......Page 44 3. James Henry Hammond and the Unsolvable Proslavery Puzzle......Page 46 4. The Three Imperfect Solutions......Page 54 5. The Puzzling Future and the Infuriating Scapegoats......Page 67 PART III: THE CLIMACTIC POLITICAL FRUSTRATIONS......Page 78 6. Bleeding Kansas and Bloody Sumner......Page 80 7. The Scattering of the Ex-Whigs......Page 104 8. James Buchanan’s Precarious Election......Page 116 9. The President-Elect as the Dred Scotts’ Judge......Page 128 10. The Climactic Kansas Crisis......Page 142 11. Caribbean Delusions......Page 164 12. Reopening the African Slave Trade......Page 187 13. Reenslaving Free Blacks......Page 204 PART IV: JOHN BROWN AND THREE OTHER MEN COINCIDENTALLY NAMED JOHN......Page 222 14. John Brown and Violent Invasion......Page 224 15. John G. Fee and Religious Invasion......Page 241 16. John Underwood and Economic Invasion......Page 255 17. John Clark and Political Invasion......Page 265 PART V: THE ELECTION OF 1860......Page 288 18. Yancey’s Lethal Abstraction......Page 290 19. The Democracy’s Charleston Convention......Page 307 20. The Democracy’s Baltimore Convention......Page 328 21. Suspicious Southerners and Lincoln’s Election......Page 342 PART VI: SOUTH CAROLINA DARES......Page 362 22. The State’s Rights Justification......Page 364 23. The Motivation......Page 371 24. The Tactics and Tacticians......Page 394 25. The Triumph......Page 414 Coda: Did the Coincidence Change History?......Page 442 PART VII: LOWER SOUTH LANDSLIDE, UPPER SOUTH STALEMATE......Page 446 26. Alexander Stephens’s Fleeting Moment......Page 448 Coda: Did Stephens’s and Hammond’s Personalities Change History?......Page 461 27. Southwestern Separatists’ Tactics and Messages......Page 464 28. Compromise Rejected......Page 482 29. Military Explosions......Page 495 30. Snowball Rolling......Page 509 31. Upper South Stalemate......Page 518 32. Stalemate—and the South—Shattered......Page 536 Coda: How Did Slavery Cause the Civil War?......Page 550 Abbreviations Used in Notes......Page 554 Notes......Page 556 A......Page 606 B......Page 607 C......Page 608 D......Page 610 E......Page 611 F......Page 612 H......Page 613 J......Page 614 L......Page 615 M......Page 616 N......Page 617 P......Page 618 R......Page 619 S......Page 620 T......Page 622 V......Page 623 Y......Page 624

It is one of the great questions of American history—why did the Southern states bolt from the Union and help precipitate the Civil War? Now, acclaimed historian William W. Freehling offers a new answer, in the final volume of his monumental history The Road to Disunion.
Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do—especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement—many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important—and least understood—stories.
The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as the most important history of the Old South ever published, this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject.

The Washington Post - Jon Meecham

The strength of Freehling's new book, as well as of its predecessor, Prelude to Civil War, lies in how meticulously he recovers the complexities and shades of (non-Confederate) gray that complicate this short account of what Shelby Foote called the crossroads of our being. As Freehling notes, most Northerners were not fond of abolitionists and did not vote for Lincoln in 1860 as an emancipator, while most Southerners were not fond of fire-eaters and did not regard slavery as a permanent blessing.

Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states, the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was, in William Freehling's words,'a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream.'It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers, where the egalitarian spirit sweeping the North seeped down through border states already uncertain about slavery, where even sections of the same state (for instance, coastal and mountain Virginia) divided bitterly on key issues. It was the world of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, and also of Gullah Jack, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass. Now, in the first volume of his long awaited, monumental study of the South's road to disunion, historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Controversy, the Gag Rule ('the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy'), the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way, he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850, and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism, Jeffersonian states'rights, Jacksonian democracy, and the causes of the American Civil War. But for all Freehling's brilliant insight into American antebellum politics, Secessionists at Bay is at bottom the saga of the rich social tapestry of the pre-war South. He takes us to old Charleston, Natchez, and Nashville, to the big house of a typical plantation, and we feel anew the tensions between the slaveowner and his family, the poor whites and the planters, the established South and the newer South, and especially between the slave and his master,'Cuffee'and'Massa.'Freehling brings the Old South back to life in all its color, cruelty, and diversity. It is a memorable portrait, certain to be a key analysis of this crucial era in American history. Annotation It is one of the great questions of American history--why did the Southern states bolt from the Union and help precipitate the Civil War? Now, acclaimed historian William W. Freehling offers a new answer, in the final volume of his monumental history The Road to Disunion . Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay , which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject The first volume of William Freehling's monumental study of the antebellum South and the road to Civil War offers a memorable portrait of the Old South in all its color, cruelty, and diversity. All the dramatic events leading up to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Gag Rule, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and more. Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states, the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was, in William Freehling's words, "a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream." It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers, where the egalitarian spirit sweeping the North seeped down through border states already uncertain about slavery, where even sections of the same state (for instance, coastal and mountain Virginia) divided bitterly on key issues. It was the world of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, and also of Gullah Jack, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass. Now, in the first volume of his long awaited, monumental study of the South's road to disunion, historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Controversy, the Gag Rule ("the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy"), the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way, he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850, and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism, Jeffersonian states' rights, Jacksonian democracy, and the causes of the American Civil War William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1861. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here, and Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating the many complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of the major figures involved. It is "indisputable," he writes, that slavery was the war's main cause, and some kind of clash was probably inevitable. The movements in the 1850s to acquire new slave territories for the United States, reopen the African slave trade and re-enslave free blacks also revealed Southern disunity. Freehling offers fascinating accounts of each. But his main point is that because of opposition within the South, all failed Vol. 1 Is A Sweeping Political And Social History Of The Antebellum South From 1776 To 1854. V. 1. Secessionists At Bay, 1776-1854 -- V. 2. Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. William W. Freehling. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.