Voices from the Gathering Storm: The Coming of the American Civil War

Voices from the Gathering Storm explains the dramatic change in thinking about the nature and value of the American Union from 1846 to 1861 which impelled citizens from 11 southern states to declare independence and the remaining 22 states to fight the bloodiest war in the nation’s history. This book tells the story of seventeen Northerners and Southerners who lived through the critical fifteen years prior to the Civil War. In their letters and diaries, they describe what it was like to live during the sectional crisis and the coming of the war. Voices from the Gathering Storm is the only text that uses primary sources to illustrate the conflicts that divided the nation before the war. This allows readers to enter more deeply into the lives of Northerners and Southerners and to understand and appreciate the way in which they responded to this tense period in American history. The author provides chapter introductions that connect the different excerpts so that readers will easily grasp the transitions that occurred in the 1840s and 1850s. These pre-Civil War years contain the key to understanding how the war came to be and also enable readers to comprehend the modern North and South.