Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War

This provocative Civil War history offers "perceptive, fine-grained analysis" to show that the conflict was rooted in economics—not moral principles (Publishers Weekly).

Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, historian Marc Egnal demonstrates that between 1820 and 1850, patterns of trade and production drew the North and South together and allowed sectional leaders to broker a series of compromises. After midcentury, however, all that changed as the rise of the Great Lakes eco...