"In recent years a highly industrious school of historians has begun asking whether the war should have been fought at all and whether it was perhaps not more the fault of the North than of the South. Seeking to revise earlier judgments they have become known as the revisionists, and one of the most gifted and studious of them all is Avery Craven, whose The Coming of the Civil War . . . is one of the landmarks of revisionist literature."—Bruce Catton, American Heritage ". . . those who would examine the democratic process during a period of progressive breakdown, in order to understand the dangers it embodies within itself, will find The Coming of the Civil War a classic analysis."—Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Sewanee Review "The book has always been recognized, even by its most severe critics, as a work of consummate scholarship."—T. Harry Williams, Baton Rouge Morning Advocate

The Coming of the Civil War (Phoenix Books)

History

Craven, Avery O.

Americas

University of Chicago Press

This book is the trade edition of Volume VI of A History of The South, a ten-volume series designed to present a thoroughly balanced history of all the complex aspects of the South’s culture from 1607 to the present. Like its companion volumes, The Growth of Southern Nationalism is written by an outstanding student of Southern history. The growth of Southern nationalism was largely the product of relations of the South to other states and to the Federal government. Often what happened in the North and the reaction of Northern men to events determined Southern action and reaction. The sections were being drawn closer together and their interests more and more entwined. That was one of the great reasons for the increased friction and discord. The sectional quarrel developed largely around slavery―slavery as a thing in itself and then as a symbol of all differences and conflicts. The reduction of the struggle to the simple terms of Northern “rights” and Southern “rights” placed issues beyond the abilities of the democratic process and rendered the great masses in both sections helpless before the drift into war. The break could not have been avoided, according to Mr. Craven, unless either the North of the South had been willing to yield its position on an issue that involved matters of “right” or “rights.” Neither could do so because slavery and come to symbolize values in each of their social-economic structures for which men fight and die but which they do not give up or compromise.

The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861: A History of the South

LSU Press

This is a fascinating story about Rachel O'Conner who lived on a plantation near Bayou Sara in Louisiana's West Feliciana Parish for nearly 50 years (1797-1846). It covers her day-to-day activities based on letters, her relationships with slaves and overseers, her failures with crops, as well as her health and legal problems. A warm and appealing story of a unique woman. Insightful, historical - a wonderful book.

Rachel of old Louisiana

Biographies & Memoirs

Regional U.S.

Louisiana State Univ. Press

“American scholarship is richer for this unique exercise. More important―the great community, . . . one again sorely beset by unsettled problems of sectional rivalry and world tension, can read this book with great profit. Too few historians put their talents at the disposal of society so effectively.” ―American Historical Review
 “A brilliant, straightforward summary of the background of America’s favorite armchair war. So deceptively simple is [Craven’s] exposition that the solid worth of the book sneaks up on the reader when, having finished it, he realizes that the brief volume may be short on detail but is complete as a well-considered, authoritative statement of history.”―Chicago Tribune
 “Never has he―or anyone else―analyzed the growing sectional conflict in more graphic or understandable terms than in the present volume.”―Civil War History

Civil War in the Making, 1815–1860 (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History)

Rachel O’Connor was an extraordinary woman. For nearly fifty years (from 1797 to 1846), she lived on a plantation near Bayou Sara in Louisiana’s West Feliciana Parish. And for twenty-five of those years, after the death of her husband, she managed the plantation alone. Although they had, as she said, “begun poor,” at the time of her death she owned about a thousand acres and seventy-five slaves. Not a biography in the conventional sense, Avery O. Craven’s charming little book is rather the story of Rachel and the Louisiana in which she lived. Based largely on several hundred of her letters, it tells of her day-to-day activities, her relationships with slaves and overseers, her successes and failures with crops, as well as her health and legal problems. By focusing on the life of one woman, Craven brings to light the thoughts, emotions, and attitudes of Louisianians (and other southerners) during this period. Rachel of Old Louisiana is a significant addition to the literature on the Old South.

Rachel of Old Louisiana

Historical