Recommended Resources
The Failure of Compromise
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Foner, Eric, and Olivia Mahoney. A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990.
Jaffa, Henry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Rable, George C. God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Oakes, James. Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Patterson, Marie. Slavery in America: Expanding and Preserving the Union, Primary Source Readers. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Resources, 1991.
Rable, George C. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Sinha, Manisha. The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Huston, James L. The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.
Clinton, Catherine. The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Krannawitter, Thomas L. Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.
Ayers, Edward L. What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
McPherson, James M. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Kessner, Thomas. Capital City: New York City and the Men behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860–1900. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.
Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Blackett, R.J.M. Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Siddali, Silvana R. From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Ayers, Edward L. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
Stiles, T. J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. New York: Knopf, 2002.
Wilson, Douglas L. Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
Blight, David W. ed. “Introduction” in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston and New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. New Haven: Yale University, 1990.