Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (Civil War Library)

Klein, Maury

ISBN 10: 0679768823 / ISBN 13: 9780679768821

Published by Vintage, New York, 1999

About this Item

xii, 496 pp. Second printing thus. Light rubbing to the cover edges. Gift inscription inside the front cover. The binding is tight and square, and the text is clean.

Seller Inventory # 080404

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (Civil War Library)
• Publisher: Vintage, New York
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679768823
• ISBN 13: 9780679768821
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Edition: Reprint
• Printing: 2nd Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

“Illuminating and well-written. . . . Deserves a place in the highest ranks of Civil War scholarship.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer 

In November 1860, telegraph lines carried the news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president. Over the next five months the United States drifted, stumbled, and finally plunged into the most destructive war this country has ever faced. With a masterful eye for telling detail, Maury Klein provides fascinating new insights into the period from the election of Abraham Lincoln to the shelling of Fort Sumter.

Klein brings the key players in the tragedy unforgettably to life: from the vacillating lame-duck President Buchanan, to the taciturn, elusive, and relatively unknown Abraham Lincoln; from Secretary of State Seward carrying on his own private negotiations with the South, to Major Robert Anderson sitting in his island fortress awaiting reinforcements. Never has this immensely significant moment in our national story been so intelligently of so spellbindingly related.

About the Author

Maury Klein is renowned as one of the finest historians of American business and economy. He is the author of many books, including A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II; The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America; and Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island. Klein lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.