The History of the Confederacy: 1832-1865

The Civil War was fought for thirty years before the mounting antagonisms exploded in a clash of arms. The period from Nullification in 1932 until Fort Sumter in 1861 constituted a long period of cold war, even by today's standards. Men who opposed one another in 1832 had gone to their rewards when the shooting began, and the generation in the South which was to die had not been born when South Carolina first defied the Union. The quarrel was passed on, from generation to generation until the men who settled it in the bloodiest way possible had little notion of what had started it. In History of the Confederacy, Clifford Dowdey surveys the gathering-the disparity between North and South economically, South Carolina's defiance of the federal Tariff Act of 1832, the stark horror of Nat Turner's Rebellion and its subsequent harvest of fear, and the conflict between ways of life within the South itself. In this stirring and thoughtful work we see Davis, Calhoun, Tooms, Stephens, Jackson, Levy, all waiting to take their parts in the tragedy that was to be played out on their own beloved land. From Mr. Dowdey's story of the Civil War itself-from Fort Sumter to Appomattox-emerges the unforgettable picture of a young army that grew into the dedicated and valiant force that fought for Lee-and for the land of the South. This is history seen through the eyes of the men who lived it-and told in a masterly fashion by one of today's most eminent historians.