ABSTRACT
The main dilemma for scholars of the coming of the Civil War, and more precisely of its main precipitating event, the coming of secession in the South during the winter of 1860-61, resides in the multiplicity of interpretations on offer. It is sometimes easier to say where interpretations are wrong than where a particular interpretation is wholly right. The historian is classically engaged in the perennial dilemma of trying to reconcile long-term historical developments with precise political decisions. Some of the most recent general interpretations of the period continue to highlight this fundamental dilemma. In a monumental two-volume work, the second volume of which has just appeared, John Ashworth provides an excellent example of the highly structured workings of long-term economic and social factors in his analysis of the coming of confrontation between the two sections.1 On the other side James McPherson in his trenchant and highly successful reassessment of the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War in particular argues repeatedly for the importance of contingency.2 In this chapter I would like to examine a particular theme central to an understanding of secession and consider how recent working have illuminated and clouded it.
