Regardless of whether they owned slaves, Southern whites lived in a world defined by slavery. As shown by their blaming British and Northern slave traders for saddling them with slavery, most were uncomfortable with the institution. While many wanted it ended, most were content to leave that up to God. All that changed with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Rebels in the Making is a narrative-driven history of how and why secession occurred. In this work, senior Civil War historian William L. Barney narrates the explosion of the sectional conflict into secession and civil war. Carefully examining the events in all fifteen slave states and distinguishing the political circumstances in each, he argues that this was not a mass democratic movement but one led from above. The work begins with the deepening strains within Southern society as the slave economy matured in the mid-nineteenth century and Southern ideologues struggled to convert whites to the orthodoxy of slavery as a positive good. It then focuses on the years of 1860-1861 when the sectional conflict led to the break-up of the Union. As foreshadowed by the fracturing of the Democratic Party over the issue of federal protection for slavery in the territories, the election of 1860 set the stage for secession. Exploiting fears of slave insurrections, anxieties over crops ravaged by a long drought, and the perceived moral degradation of submitting to the rule of an antislavery Republican, secessionists launched a movement in South Carolina that spread across the South in a frenzied atmosphere described as the great excitement. After examining why Congress was unable to reach a compromise on the core issue of slavery's expansion, the study shows why secession swept over the Lower South in January of 1861 but stalled in the Upper South. The driving impetus for secession is shown to have come from the middling ranks of the slaveholders who saw their aspirations of planter status blocked and denigrated by the Republicans. A separate chapter on the formation of the Confederate government in February of 1861 reveals how moderates and former conservatives pushed aside the original secessionists to assume positions of leadership. The final chapter centers on the crisis over Fort Sumter, the resolution of which by Lincoln precipitated a second wave of secession in the Upper South. Rebels in the Making shows that secession was not a unified movement, but has its own proponents and patterns in each of the slave states. It draws together the voices of planters, non-slaveholders, women, the enslaved, journalists, and politicians. This is the definitive study of the seminal moment in Southern history that culminated in the Civil War.

A gold mine for the historian as well as the Civil War buff, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War offers a concise, comprehensive overview of the major personalities and pivotal events of the war that redefined the American nation.
Drawing upon recent research that has moved beyond battles and military campaigns to address the significant roles played by civilians, women, and African Americans, the 250 entries explore the era in all its complexity and unmistakable human drama. Here of course are the major battles and campaigns, ranging from Gettysburg and Shiloh to Sherman's March to the Sea, as well as biographical entries on everyone from Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee to Frederick Douglass, Clara Barton, and Walt Whitman. But the book also features entries on a wealth of other matters--music, photography, religion, economics, foreign affairs, medicine, prisons, legislative landmarks, military terms and weaponry, political events, social reform, women in the war, and much more. In addition, charts, newly commissioned maps, chronologies, and period photographs provide an appealing visual context. Suggestions for further reading at the end of most entries and a guide to more general sources in an appendix introduce the reader to the literature on a specific topic. A list of Civil War museums and historic sites and a representative sampling of Civil War websites also point to resources that can be tailored to individual interests.
A quick, convenient, user-friendly guide to all facets of the Civil War, this new updated edition also serves as an invaluable gateway to the rich historical record now available, perfect for virtually anyone who wants to learn more about this tumultuous period in our history.

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 debates that preceded these events.

For five months in the winter of 1860-1861, Americans did not know for certain that civil war was upon them. Some hoped for a compromise; others wanted a fight. Many struggled to understand what was happening to their country. Robert J. Cook, William L. Barney, and Elizabeth R. Varon take approaches to this period that combine political, economic, and social-cultural lines of analysis. Rather than focus on whether civil war was inevitable, they look at the political process of secession and find multiple internal divisions--political parties, whites and nonwhites, elites and masses, men and women. Even individual northerners and southerners suffered inner conflicts.

The authors include the voices of Unionists and Whig party moderates who had much to lose and upcountry folk who owned no slaves and did not particularly like those who did. Barney contends that white southerners were driven to secede by anxiety and guilt over slavery. Varon takes a new look at Robert E. Lee's decision to join the Confederacy. Cook argues that both northern and southern politicians claimed the rightness of their cause by constructing selective narratives of historical grievances.

"Secession Winter" explores the fact of contingency and reminds readers and students that nothing was foreordained.

For all the advances of the civil rights movement, and for all the cultural diversity attending economic prosperity, many white southerners have been unable to relinquish the Confederate past and the idea of a heroic, liberty-loving South crushed by power-hungry Yankees. The Making of a Confederate uses the life of one man--Walter Lenoir of North Carolina--to explore the origins of southern white identity and the myriad ambiguities and complexities embedded in that history.
Lenoir's case is particularly fascinating in the way it complicates notions about the sources of rabid devotion to the Confederate cause. Although born into a wealthy slaveholding family, Lenoir acknowledged the institution's evils and intended to divest himself of his inherited slaves. Opposed to secession, he planned in 1860 to move to Minnesota in the free North. With the war's outbreak, however, everything changed. Lenoir joined the Confederate army and fervidly supported its cause to the end. His postwar career reveals how one Confederate coped with bereavement and a crushing sense of loss, as he refashioned his memory of what had caused the war and embraced the cult of the Lost Cause. And while some southerners sank into depression, sought accommodation with the victors, or opposed the new order through various means, Lenoir found a fresh purpose by withdrawing to his acreage in the North Carolina mountains to pursue his own vision of the South's future, one that called for greater self-sufficiency and a more efficient use of the land.
For Walter Lenoir and many other Confederates, the war never really ended. In tracing this compelling story, William Barney offers new insight into the uses of memory andhow individual choices transform abstract historical processes into concrete actions.

This is an outline of the economic crisis in the South based on the declining yields, increasing class stratification and higher slave prices. It supplies data on the property holdings and occupations of the elected representatives and finds the secessionists to be young, probably lawyers who were both ambitious and confident. Because the economic dislocation of the 1850s made people receptive to a rhetoric that emphasized conspiratorial abolitionists and almost paranoid fear of blacks and strangers, the politicians were able to persuade their constituents that a real crisis did exist and that secession was the only remedy.