The American Civil War surveys the sectional crisis that divided the United States, the secession of the southern states and the four-year conflict that followed. It explains the central place of slavery, the competing Union and Confederate war aims, emancipation and the mobilisation of armies, governments and civilian societies.
The account follows the major campaigns from the opening clashes to Appomattox while also examining diplomacy, industry, medicine and life on the home front. It concludes with the war’s enormous human cost and the political questions that carried into Reconstruction.
