Promotional Information

A sweeping account of the USA's most turbulent decades

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction
Prologue: From the Halls of Montezuma
1. The United States at Midcentury
2. Mexico Will Poison
3. An Empire for Slavery
4. Slavery, Rum, and Romanism
5. The Crime Against Kansas
6. Mudsills and Greasy Mechanics for A. Lincoln
7. The Revolution o f1860
8. The Counterrevolution
9. Facing Both Ways: The Upper South's Dilemma
10. Amateurs Go to War
11. Farewell to the Ninety Days' War
12. Blockade and Beachhead: The Salt-Water War, 1861-1862
13. The River War in 1862
14. The Sinews of War
15. Billy Yank's Chickahominy Blues
16. We Must Free the Slaves or Be Ourselves Subdued
17. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny
18. John Bull's Virginia Rell
19. Three Rivers in Winter, 1862-1863
20. Fire in the Rear
21. Long Remember: The Summer of '63
22. Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues
23. When This Cruel War is Over
24. If It Takes All Summer
25. After Four Years of Failure
26. We Are Going to be Wiped off the Earth
27. South Carolina Must Be Destroyed
28. We Are All Americans
Epilogue: To the Shoals of VIctory

Afterward
Abbreviated Titles
Bibliographic Note
Index

About the Author

James M. McPherson is Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University. His books include The Struggle for Equality, Marching Toward Freedom, and Ordeal by Fire.

Reviews

what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation. Godfrey Hodgson, The Independent probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written. The Economist

what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation. Godfrey Hodgson, The Independent probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written. The Economist