Secession Winter: When the Union Fell Apart

Three historians examine what drove southern secession in the winter of 1860-1861 and why it culminated 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 ...