The Coming of the Civil War

MANY HISTORIANS SEEM TO RELEGATE AVERY CRAVEN TODAY TO A POSITION OF PRESENT IRRELEVANCE. TODAY'S READERS MAY NOT FIND HIS IDEAS "POLITICALLY CORRECT" BUT THE QUESTION REMAINS SHOULD HISTORY BE POLITICALLY CORRECT? CRAVEN IS A GREAT HISTORIAN WHO WILL NOT BE LIKED BY ANY PERSON DEEPLY IMBEDDED IN THE RADICALISM OF EITHER SIDE OF THE MASON AND DIXON LINE. HIS PERSONAL PACIFICISM KEEPS HIM FROM SEEING THIS WAR AS AN IRRESISTABLE CONFLICT. IT MAY BE A GOOD TIME FOR US TO LOOK AT ANY WAR AND ASK IF IT IS IRRESSTIBLE. YOU MAY NOT LIKE THIS BOOK BUT IT WILL HOPEFULLY MAKE YOU THINK WHICH IS THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY. A PREVIOUS REVIEWER HAS STATED THAT FOR HIM THE BORING PART OF THE CIVIL WAR BEGINS AT FT. SUMPTER. I FULLY AGREE. THIS BOOK GIVES A FRESH LIGHT ON THE MOST INTERESTING PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY--THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD. A GREAT BOOK WELL WORTH READING. sIMPLY LOOK AT THE TABLE OF CONTENTS.

To me, the dullest part of the Civil War began at Fort Sumter. The greatest deficiency of Ken Burns' celebrated documentary (enough to make it almost useless)is that he spent almost no time on the causes. I have always found the political maneuvering between North and South, between the two great parties(and within them as well), the occasions when secession and war almost happened, and the dramatic compromises that held off disaster to be essential for understanding the war and why it was fought the way it was. The political battles over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution are more interesting to me than the dramas of Antietam, Chancellorsville or Gettysburg.Avery Craven was one of the so-called "revisionist" school of American historians, those academics who asserted that there was blame for the war on both sides, that condemned radical abolitionists and Southern fire-eaters equally. Although he may not have intended it, Professor Craven makes an even more interesting assertion. There were not two sides in this affair but three. The West(what would now be the Middle West)was a region with its own economic interests. And this region, for the most part, wouldn't have gotten all that worked up about slavery if its farmers could have gotten their goods to market. But Southern political ineptitude and indifference to Western interests alienated that region from the South and probably cost the South the war.All in all, an excellent history of the antebellum United States. Whether you agree with Professor Craven's ideas or not, this book is well worth your time.