Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861

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).