Charleston Mercury Extra, December 20, 1860.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Questions to consider
1. Why did the Civil War happen when and how it did?
2. How different were North and South on the eve of secession?
3. Why did the Union manage to hold together, despite disagreements over slavery, for so long?
4. What was the role of economic factors in the coming of the Civil War?

Reading
Wilentz, Sean, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2006)
Adam I. P. Smith, The American Civil War (2007), chapters 1-2.
Edward Pessen, “How different from each other were the antebellum North and South?” American Historical Review 85 (1980)
James M. McPherson, “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A new look at an old question,” Civil War History 50:4 (2004): 418-433
Robert Cook, “A Robber and a Jailer: The Antebellum Republic,” from Civil War America: Making a Nation, 1848-1877 (2004)
William W. Freehling, “The Divided South, Democracy’s Limitations, and the Causes of the Peculiarly North American Civil War,” from The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War (1994).