The Causes of the Civil War : Revised Edition

Rating:
Summary: Facinating selection from diverse sources
Review: some drivel, some repetitive and others stunning with fresh insight. Impossible to characterize as biased because of the variety of sources. What is called the "American Civil War" is a complex event which is difficult to untangle from all that preceded or followed it. The self-rightousness, aggrandizing commercial motives of the North were often masked as moral crusades and the theme emerged time and time again as I read. I would have to add this as a "must read" for anyone who is serious about scholarship of the period.

Rating:
Summary: Sure, Union troops fought to end slavery
Review: some drivel, some repetitive and others stunning with fresh insight. Impossible to characterize as biased because of the variety of sources. What is called the "American Civil War" is a complex event which is difficult to untangle from all that preceded or followed it. The self-rightousness, aggrandizing commercial motives of the North were often masked as moral crusades and the theme emerged time and time again as I read. I would have to add this as a "must read" for anyone who is serious about scholarship of the period.

Rating:
Summary: Sure, Union troops fought to end slavery
Review: Sure, just another book that on one hand tells us that only a small minority of Quaker 'fanatics' were abolitionists, and that the war was over expansion and not slavery, and then the next minute have us all believe that Union troops faught and died to end slavery when in many of their hometowns there were laws that forbid blacks, Indians, and mulatooes from staying in town after sundown. If you believe that people died for this, then you need to be reading bedtime stories. The war was fought over MONEY, POWER, and caused by disagreement between Constitutional Federalists and Jeffersonians. Even the Supreme Court ruled that secession was allowed under the Constitution (in 1862 I believe), but in their ruling said basically that 'this is our ruling, but to no avail, because the issue is being decided on the battlefields as we speak'.