Books by William W. (Professor of History Freehling

This is the first volume of a detailed study of the American South's road to disunion, offering a social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. The dramatic events leading to secession are related, and there are profiles of the major figures of the era.

This collection of essays deals with the question of slavery, and how the South in particular responded to the problem. Essays deal with subjects such as the Constitution and slavery, slave rebellion and the division in the South over whether to secede from the Union or not.

When William Freehling's Prelude to Civil War first appeared in 1965 it was immediately hailed as a brilliant study of the origins of the American Civil War. Three decades later, its importance remains undiminished and is still considered one of the most significant studies in its field. This vivid description of a society on the brink powerfully conveys the combustive social elements of the Old South, as well as the political manoeuvring and combativepersonalities that finally ensured secession and war, and insists upon the central importance of the South's `peculiar institution' in understanding the roots of the Civil War.