The Fire-Eaters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the secession movement and the context in which it developed. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources, spoke in many voices, and responded to a number of regional problems, needs, and aspirations.

The 1850s offered the last remotely feasible chance for the United States to steer clear of Civil War. Yet fundamental differences between North and South about slavery and the meaning of freedom caused political conflicts to erupt again and again throughout the decade as the country lurched toward secession and war. The Shattering of the Union is a concise, readable analysis and survey of the major ideas and events that resulted in the Civil War. The first scholarly synthesis of America's final antebellum decade to be published in more than twenty years, this essential overview incorporates...

IWilliam Lowndes Yancey (1814-63) was one of the leading secessionists of the Old South. In this first comprehensive biography, Eric H. Walther examines the personality and political life of the uncompromising fire-eater.

Born in Georgia but raised in the North by a fiercely abolitionist stepfather and an emotionally unstable mother, Yancey grew up believing that abolitionists were cruel, meddling, and hypocritical. His personal journey led him through a series of mentors who transformed his political views, and upon moving to frontier Alabama in his twenties, Yancey's penchant for...