Is the Union voluntary or an agreement with no escape route? Setting the tone, John M. Taylor leads off by noting the travails of a respected ancestor. Major questions in America are explored, including differing views of the meaning of union. Though numerous issues led to war, most modern establishment historians generalize everything down to one. Pre-war and post-war years are largely ignored, trivialized, or sanitized. 



The four-year travesty of 1861-65 represents the most destructive period in American history and a change in the republic itself. The conflict-the...