"Freehling has struck as powerful blow for history as narrative art in this remarkable recounting of the southern secession movement up to 1854."--George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University. "The major work of scholarship by the author of Prelude to the Civil War.... Will interest readers with its brilliant evocation of the antebellum South." --Publisher's Weekly"A complex, challenging reassessment of southern motives and movements from the birth of the American nation to the Kansas-Nebraska Act...Dense and idiosyncratic...an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly reconstruction of southern history..." --Kirkus Reviews