...This is a book about the coming of the Civil War. Historians will recognize the typical antebellum story of political events associated with growing sectionalism and conflict, from the Wilmot Proviso through the secession winter of 1860–61. However, this is also a book about Americans' personal...

...This chapter discusses Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who began the secession winter of 1860–61 as a hesitant disunionist but came to endorse the decision to quit the Union as regrettable but necessary. Davis hoped that the U.S. government would let the seceding states depart in peace...