VOLUME 19 CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR 1859-1861 BY FRENCH ENSOR CHADWICK REAR-ADMIRAL U.S. N. RECENT PRESIDENT OF THE NAVAL WAR COLLEGE WITH MAPS NEW YORK AND LONDON EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION HE most dramatic and most momentous epi THE sode in the history of the United States is undoubtedly the Civil War, into which the country slowly drifted for nearly ten years, but which burst out with amazing suddenness and unexpectedness. From one point of view all the volumes of the American Nation, after the Revolutionary period, deal with the friction between the North and the South. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Volume XVI.), specifically discusses the controversy over slavery and anti-slavery. Smith, Parties and Slavery (American Nation, XVIII.), brings out the political divergences. In the first four chapters of this volume, Admiral Chadwick intentionally restates this discussion in the light of the intense sectional rivalry and mutual dislike revealed over the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency; and he shows the economic importance of slave-grown products and the significance of the political theory of state rights at the time of the outbreak. The narrative begins where Professor Smith's volume leaves off in 1859, with the John Brown raid (chapter v.). In the next chapter the political events of 1859 and |