A Home Divided: Slavery and American Politics from the Structure to the Civil Warfare

In a deeply researched, wide-ranging guide, retired journalist Ben McNitt tells the story of how slavery formed American politics—and certainly the American story—from the Founding till the Civil Warfare. McNitt’s sharp narrative covers individuals and occasions that also resonate: Thomas Jefferson, John Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, the slave revolts of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Brown and Harpers Ferry, fire-eating secessionists, and the rise of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. No different single work covers this subject as comprehensively and accessibly.