The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861 - David M. Potter

David M. Potter's magisterial The Impending Crisis is the single best account to date of the coming of the Civil War. -- Civil War History David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the classic study of of antebellum America ( American Prospect ). Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern succession. Now available in a new edition, The Impending Crisis remains modern scholarship's most comprehensive account of the coming of the Civil War ( Journal of Southern History ).