Decade of Disunion

How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861

Robert W. Merry

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982176518
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

With “characteristic wisdom and grace” (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author) Robert W. Merry explores a critical lesson about our nation that is as timely today as ever demonstrating how the country came apart during the enveloping slavery crisis of the 1850s.

The Mexican War brought vast new territories to the United States, which precipitated a growing crisis over slavery. The new territories seemed unsuitable for the type of agriculture that depended on slave labor, but they lay south of the line where slavery was permitted by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The subject of expanding slavery to the new territories became a flash point between the North and South.

First came the 1850 compromise legislation, which strengthened the fugitive slave law and outraged the North. Then in 1854, Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise altogether, unleashing a violent conflict in “Bleeding Kansas” over whether that territory would become free or enslaved. The 1857 Dred Scott decision—abrogating any rights of African Americans, enslaved or free—further outraged the North. And John Brown’s ill-planned 1859 attack at the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry stirred anger and fear throughout the South.

Through a decade, the divide between the North and the South widened until disunion became inevitable. Then, in December 1860, in the wake of the Lincoln election, South Carolina finally seceded, leading the South of the Union. Beginning with the deaths of the great second-generation figures of American history—Calhoun, Webster, and Clay—Decade of Disunion tells the story of this great American struggle through the aims, fears, and maneuvers of the subsequent prominent figures at the center of the drama, with particular attention to the key players from Massachusetts and South Carolina.

Decade of Disunion is a “thoughtful and accomplished” (The Wall Street Journal) look at one of the most tumultuous times of American history, offering us a sobering reminder that democracy is not self-sustaining—it must be constantly and carefully tended.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: New World Beginnings
• Chapter 2: Crisis in Miniature
• Chapter 3: The Crucible of 1850
• Chapter 4: Bay State Turmoil
• Chapter 5: Palmetto State Struggles
• Chapter 6: Rhett in Washington
• Chapter 7: Sumner in the Senate
• Chapter 8: 1852
• Chapter 9: President Pierce
• Chapter 10: Kansas and Nebraska
• Chapter 11: The Massachusetts Shoemaker
• Chapter 12: Boston Blood
• Chapter 13: Prairie Tensions
• Chapter 14: Sectionalism Rising
• Chapter 15: Six Days in May
• Chapter 16: Campaign of ’56
• Chapter 17: Buchanan at the Helm
• Chapter 18: Butler Departs
• Chapter 19: Rise of the Radicals
• Chapter 20: 35th Congress
• Chapter 21: Lincoln Makes His Move
• Chapter 22: Realignment
• Chapter 23: Harpers Ferry
• Chapter 24: A Time of Foreboding
• Chapter 25: Presidential Scramble
• Chapter 26: Lincoln Victorious
• Chapter 27: Dissolution
• Chapter 28: Civil War
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustration Credits
• Copyright