Description: In the decades of the early republic, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth Varon shows, "disunion" connoted the dissolution of the republic--the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world. For many others, however, disunion was seen as the main instrument by which they could achieve their partisan and sectional goals. Varon blends political history with intellectual, cultural, and gender history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis of 1860-61.
Review Quotes: "From the moment the American union was created in 1789, threats and fears of disunion pervaded the polity. At the root of these fears lay the paradox of a slaveholding nation founded on a charter of freedom. With great clarity, Elizabeth Varon shows how sixty years of disunion rhetoric centered on slavery set the stage for secession and war."--James M. McPherson, author of "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief"