Secession Winter: When the Union Fell Apart

by Robert J. Cook, William L. Barney, Elizabeth R. Varon

Overview

What prompted southern secession in the winter of 1860–61 and why did secession culminate in the American Civil War?

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. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861 triggered civil war and the loss of four upper South states from the Union. The essays by three senior historians in Secession Winter explore the robust debates that preceded these events.

For five months in the winter of 1860–1861, Americans did not know for certain that civil 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. Barney, 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 war was inevitable, they look at the political process of secession and find multiple internal divisions—political parties, whites and nonwhites, elites and masses, men and women. Even individual northerners and southerners suffered inner conflicts.

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 join the Confederacy. Cook argues that 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421408965
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2013
Series:	The Marcus Cunliffe Lecture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	693,371
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert J. Cook is a professor of American history at the University of Sussex and author of Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic.

Table of Contents

Foreword Jarod Roll vii

Introduction: The Secession Crisis as a Study in Conflict Resolution 1

Rush to Disaster: Secession and the Slaves' Revenge William L. Barney 10

"Save in Defense of My Native State": A New Look at Robert E. Lee's Decision to Join the Confederacy Elizabeth R. Varon 34

The Shadow of the Past: Collective Memory and the Coming of the American Civil War Robert J. Cook 58

Conclusion: Conflicted Minds and Civil War Causation 86

Notes 91

Guide to Further Reading 105

Index 113

Editorial Reviews

[Secession Winter] should be attractive for use in undergraduate courses on the Civil War era.

The Historian - Stanley Harrold

This slim but stimulating collection. . . deserves a wide audience.

Journal of Southern History - Jeremy Neely

This slim but stimulating collection. . . deserves a wide audience.
—Jeremy Neely, Journal of Southern History

[Secession Winter] should be attractive for use in undergraduate courses on the Civil War era.
—Stanley Harrold, The Historian

From the Publisher