Secession winter : when the Union fell apart.
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 91-103) and index.

Politicians and opinion leaders on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line struggled to formulate coherent responses to the secession of the Deep South states in December 1860 and early 1861. Then a confederate attack on Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861 triggered civil war and prompted the departure of four Upper South States from the Union. Here three senior historians explore the robust debates that took place between these momentous events. For five months in the winter of 1860-61, Americans did not know for certain that war was upon them. Some hoped for a compromise; others wanted a fight. Many struggled to understand what was happening to their country. Robert J. Cook, William L. Arney, and Elizabeth R. Varon take approaches to this period that combine political, economic, and social-cultural lines of analysis. Rather than focus on whether civil conflict was inevitable, they look at the political parties, whites and nonwhites, elites and masses, men and women. Every individual, Northern and Southern had to make a sometimes painful decision. The authors include the voices of Unionists and Whig Party moderates who had much to lose and upcountry folk who owned no slaves and did not particularly like those who did. Barney contends that white southerners were driven to secede by anxiety and guilt over slavery. Varon takes a new look at Robert E. Lee's decision to cast his lot with the confederacy. Cook demonstrate how both Northern and Southern politicians claimed the rightness of their cause by constructing selective narratives of historical grievances. Secession Winter explores the fact of contingency and reminds readers and students that nothing was foreordained. -- [Taken from the back cover of the book.].