Decade of Disunion How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849–1861 [Audiobook]

And John Brown's ill-planned 1859 attack at the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry stirred anger and fear throughout the South. Through a decade, South Carolina, whose economy depended heavily on slave labor, struggled over whether to secede in a stand-alone act of defiance or to do so only in conjunction with other states. Meanwhile, Massachusetts became the country's antislavery epicenter but debated whether the Constitution was worth saving in the effort to abolish bondage. Both states widened the divide between North and South until disunion became inevitable. Then, in December 1860, in the wake of the Lincoln election, South Carolina finally seceded, leading the South out of the Union. Beginning with the deaths of the great second-generation figures of American history-Calhoun, Webster, and Clay-Decade of Disunion tells the story of this great American struggle through the aims, fears, and maneuvers of the subsequent prominent figures at the center of the drama, with particular attention to the key players from Massachusetts and South Carolina. This history is a sobering reminder that democracy is not self-sustaining-it must be constantly and carefully tended.