Chapters 1, 2, 14. Union, Secession, and Nationalism

University Press, 1946), and Hans Kohn, American Nationalism An
Interpretative Essay (New York Macmillan, 1957), and on the meaning of
Union, specifically, Paul C. Nagel, One Nation Indivisible The Union in
American Thought, 1776–1861 (New York and Oxford Oxford University
Press, 1964) and his followup study, This Sacred Trust American Nationality,
1798–1898 (New York and Oxford Oxford University Press, 1971). Studies that adopt a broader perspective on the subject and link it to the outbreak of the Civil War include Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle Memory and Desire
in the Idea of American Freedom, 1815–1860 (Ithaca, NY Cornell University
Press, 1967), and Major L. Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom The Quest
for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815–1861 (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, Sectionalism, like secession, is more frequently explored from a Southern/
Confederate perspective, as, indeed, is nationalism in the Civil War era generally. Exceptions to the Southern focus include the extremely sophisticated treatment of the growth of sectional thinking in Michael A. Morrison,
Slavery and the American West The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming
of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press, and, for sectional sentiment in South Carolina, Manisha Sinha, The
Counterrevolution of Slavery Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South
Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC, and London University of North Carolina Press. On the growth of a specifically Northern sectional/national sentiment at odds with the whole idea of the South, see Susan-Mary Grant, North over
South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era
(Lawrence, KS University Press of Kansas, 2000). A valuable study that highlights the prevalence of the threat of disunion between the period of the early republic and the outbreak of the Civil War, which nevertheless stresses that disunion should not be narrowly conceived of as synonymous with secession, is Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American
Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press,
2008).
On the South, specifically, the focus of many studies is on the development of a distinctive Southern nationalism linking it both to the act of secession itself and to support for the Confederacy during the war and to the development of the Lost Cause after it. Here early studies include Avery O.
Craven’s The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861 (Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1953), Charles S. Sydnor, The Development
of Southern Sectionalism, 1819–1848 (1948, repr. Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana
State University Press, 1968) and David M. Potter, The South and the Sectional
Conflict (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana State University Press, 1968). More recent studies have extended the debate considerably, and these include
Emory Thomas, The Confederate Nation (New York Harper & Row, and John McCardell’s The Idea of a Southern Nation Southern Nationalists
366
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Guide to Further Reading

and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860 (New York WW. Norton, 1979). For the war years themselves see Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate
Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1988), Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War:
How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy could not Stave off
Defeat (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1997), Robert E. Bonner,
Colors and Blood Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton, NJ,
and Oxford Princeton University Press, 2002), and Anne Sarah Rubin, A
Shattered Nation The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868 (Chapel
Hill, NC, and London University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Afresh and comparative approach to Southern nationalism is provided by Don H. Doyle in Nations Divided America, Italy, and the Southern Question (Athens, GA,
and London University of Georgia Press, 2002), and a useful collection of essays in W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed, Where These Memories Grow History,
Memory, and Southern Identity (Chapel Hill, NC University of North
Carolina Press, The buildup to secession itself is traced through, among others, William
L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse Alabama and Mississippi in 1860
(Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1974), Michael P. Johnson,
Toward a Patriarchal Republic The Secession of Georgia (Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1977), J. Mills Thornton III, Politics and
Power in a Slave Society Alabama, 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana
State University Press, 1978), Christopher J. Olsen, Political Culture and
Secession in Mississippi Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition,
1830–1860 (New York and Oxford Oxford University Press, 2000), and most comprehensively in William W. Freehling’s two-volume study The Road to
Disunion I, Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854, and II, Secessionists Triumphant,
1852–1861 (New York and Oxford Oxford University Press, 1990, 2007). For the period of the secession winter of 1860/61 itself, see Steven A. Channing,
Crisis of Fear Secession in South Carolina (New York Simon & Schuster,
1970), Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates Upper South Unionists
in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press, Ralph A. Wooster, The Secession Conventions of the South (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), and Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion:
Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
(Charlottesville, VA University of Virginia Press, The North’s response to secession is explored in several older studies by
David M. Potter, Lincoln and his Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1942), Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came:
The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861 (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana
University Press, 1950), and Richard Current, Lincoln and the First Shot
(New York Lippincott, 1963). On the North in the Civil War generally,
studies that explore the nationalist response to secession include Earl J. Hess,
Guide to Further Reading
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367

Liberty, Virtue, and Progress Northerners and their War for the Union (New
York: New York University Press, 1988), and Melinda Lawson, Patriot
Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002). Studies that adopt a broader time frame on the Civil War’s impact on American nationalism include Richard
Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan The Origins of Central State Authority
in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge and New York Cambridge University
Press, 1990), and Peter Dobkin Hall, The Organization of American Culture,
1700–1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of American Nationality
(New York New York University Press, 1982). An extremely valuable collection of essays exploring the subject of the North and the American nation is Peter J. Parish, The North and the Nation in the Era of the Civil War,
ed. Adam IP. Smith and Susan-Mary Grant (New York Fordham University
Press, 2003).
WWW
The Web resources mentioned above will have information and documents about secession. In addition, there is an ongoing Secession Era Editorials
Project” at Furman University http://history.furman.edu/editorials/see.py.

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