The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861

Drawing on his own highly regarded work on the origins of the Civil War and his command of current historiography, John Ashworth has produced a compelling and lucid account of the road to disunion. He convincingly places slavery where it belongs - at the center of the era’s social and political conflict - and makes the slaves themselves important actors in the story. “This is an outstanding achievement. John Ashworth has given us a meticulous but very readable account of how the major political ideologies of the antebellum era took shape and of the roles they played in bringing on the Civil War. No one has treated that important subject with as much thoroughness and subtlety.” “The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861, is a deft and accessible summation of John Ashworth’s major re-interpretation of the origins of the Civil War. It appears at a vital moment, when scholars are reviving long-discredited claims that the Civil War was an accident and emancipation its `inadvertent’ by-product. Against this rising tide of neo-revisionism, Ashworth offers a compelling re-affirmation of slavery as the fundamental issue in the sectional crisis.”