audiobook Western Civilizations: Their History Their Culture (Nineteenth Edition) (Vol. 1) by Joshua Cole; Carol Symes in History

Description

Professor Holt's book provides a lucid and provocative interpretation of the coming of the Civil War.Holt sees the Civil War as representing a breakdown in America's democratic political process; more specifically the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats. He demonstrates this system's success; beginning in the 1820s and 1830s; in confining sectional disputes safely within the political arena. With the breakdown of vital two-party competition in the 1850s; sectional issues increasingly took on ideological dimension; causing; Americans North and South to see in them dangerous threats to cherished republican institutions. No longer manageable within the arena of politics; sectional differences had to be resolved with in the arena of battle.The Political Crisis of the 1850s offers a clearly written account of politics (state and federal); sectionalism; race; and slavery from the 1820s through to the Civil War; brilliantly combining the behavioral and ideological approaches to political history.