Taking a Stand: Portraits from the Southern Secession Movement

By Walter Brian Cisco

Book Overview

Turbulent decades of sectional discord over slavery, tariffs, and the very meaning of the Constitution would finally explode into war. At no time in American history, was it more true that ideas pull triggers. Yet until now few books on the Civil War era have adequately and fairly dealt with the Southern impulse for secession.Taking a Stand recounts the personal stories of how five Southerners came to their own individual decisions to abandon the Union. Thomas Cooper (1759-1839), Robert Barnwell Rhett (1800-1876), James Henley Thorne (1812-1862), John Tyler (1790-1862), and John Adams Gilmer (1805-1868), each in his viewpoint and experience represents a current in the movement that culminated in secession. Theirs is the compelling story, of the birth of the Confederate cause.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572491574
• ISBN13: 9781572491571
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: White Mane Publishing Company
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Recommend

5 Carolina men of substance and their struggle with the secession movement in the early to mid 19th century. It brings to life the disproportionate tax systems, and federal encroachments that lead to the reluctant withdraw from the Union. I do recommend it. As the author explains in his preface: the opinions encountered may seem foreign to Americans raised on the facile dogmas and permitted conventions of popular history. Four million Americans did not march off to war in a political vacuum. Those who view the struggle over slavery as a morality play, as well as those who minimize slavery's importance, should both be challenged. In any case, i trust that readers will come to understand that the motivations of secessionist were complex and varied, their arguments eloquent, their explanations understandable and not illogical.