Road to Disunion : Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861

From eminent, prize-winning historian William W. Freehling, this is the masterful, definitive account of how the Old South started the Civil War. Freehling traces the development of Southern sentiment for disunion after 1854, but shows how fortuitous events, after Lincoln's election as President in 1860, allowed a tiny minority to lead the South into war and succession.