Most students have some sense of the Civil War. They know that by 1860 slavery divided the nation and that most Northerners who fought did so to preserve the Union. However, it's still very tempting for students—and others—to take a simplistic view of the war. Either, "It was all about slavery," or "It wasn't about slavery at all." Neither, of course, is correct. 

Our objective here is to track the issues the U.S. faced in 1860 deeper into America’s past. By the end of their reading, students should recognize that the war that broke out in 1861 had a “long fuse” stretching back to the beginnings of the nation, and that policy makers waged an extensive and ultimately unsuccessful fight to contain the fundamental differences between North and South.