This is a must read for anyone interested in a deep dive of the underlying roadmap to the American Civil War. Hindsight is always 20/20 and William Freehling does a great job of showing that. ( )

My review is available at http://elektratig.blogspot.com/2009/07/road-to-road-to-gettysburg-10-favorite.ht... ( )

I consider this a well written book that deals with an issue of American politics in a new way. The author looks in unusual places for significant factors in the growth of succession. He certainly provided me with some new ideas to think about. Freehling places great emphasis on the border south, the middle south and the deep south as separate regions that reacted differently to slavery. He begins with an interesting discussion of the death of slavery in the North. According to him there were slaves in New York and New Jersey until the 1830's.
Freehling focuses on the low country South Carolinians as the part of the south that never joined the Union and pushed secession. He has many interesting portrayals of the people involved who present a wide ranging cast of characters. The men behind secession included everyone from intellectuals to low country sugar growers who all saw the Southern way of life as alien to Northern culture.
As he describes the lessening of the ties between the sections you can hear the bands that hold the nation fly apart. Very specific factors, such as the death of the Whig party are chronicled as secession comes closer. One item, the Kansas-Nebraska Act is not given the prominence of other authors. Mr. Freehling draws his own picture of the national disintegration.
I recommend the book highly. It is written very intelligently and once you forget that this isn't the story you usually hear several good points are made. Some knowledge of the era is useful. My favorite on the breaking up has always been The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton. ( )

3736. The Road to Disunion Volume I: Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854, by William W. Freehling (read 26 Apr 2003) I have done a lot reading in pre-Civil War U.S. history, including the masterpieceful The Impending Crisis 1848-1861, by David M. Potter (read 15 May 1976), and thought this book would be good to read since it has been a while since I have read in the field. Freehling is not a lucid writer and the first 100 pages or so of this were hard to read, but the book gets steadily better and it covers the exciting and momentous events in the 1830s to 1854 period very well. Great subject matter, not so great writing. ( )