WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
"Profound and original, The Impending Crisis is history in the grand tradition." -Eric Foner
"Magisterial. . . The single best account to date of the coming of the Civil War." --Civil War History
David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is "the classic study of antebellum America" (American Prospect). Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War:
- Westward expansion
- The divisive issue of slavery
- The Dred Scott decision
- John Brown's uprising
- The ascension of Abraham Lincoln
- And the drama of Southern succession
This riveting and significant historical work remains "modern scholarship's most comprehensive account of the coming of the Civil War" (Journal of Southern History).