The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War

This modest collection of essays embodies the kind of work I love most: a master historian writing about the questions that interest him. "The Irrepressible Conflict" stood out as the most convincing and thorough argument. Its subject is the inevitability of the Civil War and whether the North could have ended slavery through patience. Stampp dismantles the idea with aplomb. "The Southern Road to Appomattox" promotes the idea that a lack of will killed the confederacy. Stampp places too much emphasis on guilt, but the idea of a lack of will was useful for other works, notably "Why the South Lost the Civil War". The other essays are a mix of historiography and analysis of such questions as Lincoln's motivation in resupplying Fort Sumter, the use and misuse of psychology in assessing slaves, and the meaning of racism in the Republican Party. Recommended.