Dimensions
140 x 215 x 45mm
The first book in Bruce Catton's monumental American Civil WAr trilogy opens with the Democratic Party's Charleston Convention in 1860 and the split which ended with two Democratic candidates for the Presidency, followed by the Republic Convention and the campaign which ended in Lincoln's victory. With tension mounting, it then covers the wave of secession in the South, the firing of the first shots of the war at Fort Sumter, the aligning of forces in the North and South and ends with the first battle of the war at Bull Run.
Catton superbly conveys, at every stage, the way the country first drifted and then was swept into the war. We see Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, even after Fort Sumter, declaring that a peaceful solution could still be found and, famously, Robert E Lee, who was opposed to slavery, preparing to fight for the Confederacy while the slave owning William T Sherman lines up with the North.
