Name: Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859
ISBN: 9780807871591

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Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

Elizabeth R. Varon

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In the decades of the early republic, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth Varon shows, "disunion" connoted the dissolution of the republic - the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world. For many others, however, disunion was seen as the main instrument by which they could achieve their partisan and sectional goals. Varon blends political history with intellectual, cultural, and gender history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis of 1860-61.

Book Details

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Publish Date: Sep 15th, 2010
Pages: 472
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.12in - 6.08in - 1.11in - 1.45lb
EAN: 9780807871591
Categories: • United States - 19th Century• United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877)

About the Author

Varon, Elizabeth R.: - Elizabeth R. Varon is professor of history at Temple University.

Praise for this book

Highly readable political, social, and intellectual history at its best. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice

[A] very important book. . . . Well-written and carefully documented and will be imminently useful to undergraduate and graduate classrooms alike.--The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

In scope, authority, and lucidity, this book . . . deserves to be ranked alongside some of the landmark studies of Civil War causation. . . . As good an account of the worldview of antebellum Americans as one can read.--H-Civil War

A compelling argument about the political significance of language. . . Speaks to specialists and remains approachable for undergraduates, scholars in other fields, and general readers.--Common-Place

Varon fulfills her goal of distinguishing disunion from secession and exploring the multifaceted meanings of the term. . . . She eminently succeeds in showing how disunion evolved from a 'prophecy' that no one wanted fulfilled to the fire-eaters' 'program.'--American Historical Review

Varon's success in setting her analysis of disunion rhetoric against a comprehensive historiographical backdrop is exceptional. Meticulously researched and beautifully assembled, Disunion will become a standard text for students and scholars interested in this tumultuous chapter in American history.--North & South

A broad study. . . . Strong both in illuminating operative gender and racial perspectives and in presenting in some detail the views and methods of presentation and activism of many figures who will be unfamiliar even to most American historians, but who, as this book demonstrates, should not be ignored.--Reviews in American History

Installs [the premise of disunion] by weaving the country's beginnings with the immediate, and profound, philosophical differences that existed between the agrarian, slaveholding South and the industrialized North.--The Anniston Star

A cogently reasoned intellectual history of a frequently misunderstood historical term. . . . Varon successfully weaves together political debates, contemporary journalism, literary fiction and nonfiction, sermons from pulpits of the nation's leading churches and other sources of popular culture.--Civil War Times

Highly engaging. . . . Makes good use of recent historical literature to produce a synthetic and balanced account of the politics of disunion in the American republic.--Civil War Book Review