The Origins of the American Civil War

This impressive volume - one of the most eagerly awaited additions to a famous series - treats with appropriate amplitude and authority the origins of one of the most terrible conflicts of modern times. The American Civil War was the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century. In its mingling of ideology and self-interest, and in the destructiveness of its weaponry, the extent of its casualties, the degree to which resources on both sides had to be mobilised for the war effort, and, not least, in the way the realities of warfare were brought home - literally - into the drawing rooms and parlours of the American people and far beyond, it can claim not only to prefigure modern warfare but itself to be the first distinctively modern war.
Why did it happen? Was it an avoidable tragedy precipitated by irresponsible demagogues, or a necessary refining fire for a divided nation? To what extent was slavery the central issue, or was it a front for less principled passions and rivalries? How far did those who presided over the countdown to violence foresee the outcome, and the scale and horror of what would ensue? Brian Holden Reid sets out to answer these and other questions in his survey of the events preceding the outbreak of war in 1861, and of the vast literature to which they have since given rise.

Brian Holden Reid is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King's College, London, and Resident Historian at the British Army Staff College, Camberley.