Volume 38, Number 16 · October 10, 1991
The South Against Itself
By Bertram Wyatt-Brown
The Road to Disunion: Vol. I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854
by William W. Freehling
Oxford University Press, 640 pp., $30.00
Ken Burns's highly popular TV series on the Civil War last year barely touched on the 'cold war' between the advocates and opponents of slavery that preceded the clash of arms. Yet the tensions between North and South posed problems very much alive today, when disputes over sovereignty and separatism, nationalism and local rights dominate headlines, just as they did in the pre–Civil War United States. As C. Vann Woodward has often reminded us, Southerners should be particularly aware of how predicaments in current world history bear analogy to circumstances in their region's dark and distinctive past.
Review, 5231 words
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