Civil War Origins Overview Books

The following books broadly describe how the U.S. Civil War came to happen (they each begin somewhere between 1776 and 1850)


McPherson, James.  Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) (1988, 2003-2nd edition) 909 pages.  Chapters 1 - 8 (275 pages).  (begins c. 1848).

McPherson uses a balanced, straight forward, mainstream approach to discussing the major issues of the 1850s in describing the origins of the war.  He writes simply and directly while sharing some wise insights with his readers. That's a major reason why McPherson is one of most widely read academic historians there is. 

If the first 275 pages of Battle Cry of Freedom does not satisfy you, you can try one of these: 

Potter, David.  The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976) 672 pages.
(covers the years 1850 - 1861)

Forty years old this year, this timeless classic the very same year span as does McPherson's book.  But being 150% larger than the 8 Chapters McPherson devotes to the origins of the war, Potter covers an incredible amount of detail than McPherson does not. What were provocative new political insights four decades ago still challenge the reader to think intently about them.  

Morrison, Michael.  Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny (2000)  428 pages.
(covers the years 1840 - 1860)

"... this book examines the relationship between the territorial issue and the origins of the American Civil War.... The story is familiar; this telling is not.  Lying at the intersection of political, diplomatic, and intellectual history, it explores the origin, force, and effect of expansion in national politics in the 1830s and 1840s.  ... The book is a narrative of political affairs. It does not however focus on party structure or political maneuvers... [but] rather than retell events the purpose here is to illuminate and analyze the principled conflicts of slavery extension."  (Morrison, p.4)


Varon, Elizabeth.  Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859   (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era) (2008) 472 pages.  

Varon takes the most original approach to unraveling the origins of the war of all of these historians.  Her argument stands on her analysis of the word "disunion" for 70 years until the war began.  She claims that "disunion,"' like "liberty," "tyranny," "democracy," and "slavery" was a  nebulous "keyword of the nation's political vocabulary ... that captured complex ideas and values and served as a site for protracted moral, political, economic conflicts in a deeply and multiply divided nation." (Varon, p. 2).  She then categorizes  the word into five types of usages; as a prophesy, a threat, an accusation, a process, and a program.   She then analyses the usage of the word in public discourse over seven decades, noting a growing anxiety as the nation spirals toward secession and war. 

Baptist, Edward. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014)  528 pages. 

Baptist's book is the latest entry into this exclusive domain.  Taking an economic approach, but not the old one about an industrial society against an agrarian society, Baptist argues that from the Revolution until the Civil War, the U.S. grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn out tobacco farms to an expansive, industrial and capitalist economy on the backs of slaves  increasingly brutalized  to force greater profits from their labor.  The increasing amounts of cotton they produced was the single most valuable product for fueling the north's industrial economic engine and supplying Europe with the most desired product, thus making the U.S. very influential in international affairs.   


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Two Volume sets:

Freehling's two volume set is most similar to Potter's deeply detailed analysis, but what Potter does for the 1850s Freehling does for eight and a half decades.  The results are excellent.

Freehling, William.  The Road to Disunion: Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854  (1990) 656 pages.

Freehling, William.  The Road to Disunion: Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861 (2004)  627 pages.
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Ashworth's set begins at the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and charts a Marxist history type class conflict in the coming of the war.  Fortunately, Ashworth eschews some of the old Marxist nonsense like teleology and inevitability, so his work remains fresh and provocative. 

Ashworth, Steven.  Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume 1, Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850 (1996) 536 pages.

Ashworth. Steven.  Slavery, Capitalism and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume 2, The Coming of the Civil War, 1850-1861 (2008)  694 pages.