From eminent, prize-winning historian William W. Freehling, this is the masterful, definitive account of how the Old South started the Civil War. Freehling traces the development of Southern sentiment for disunion after 1854, but shows how fortuitous events, after Lincoln's election as President in 1860, allowed a tiny minority to lead the South into war and succession. This sure-to-be-lasting work-studded with pen portraits and consistently astute in its appraisal of the subtle cultural and geographic variations in the region-adds crucial layers to scholarship on the origins of America's bloodiest conflict.