Historians today largely agree that slavery was central to the causation of the American Civil War. Prior to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, however, other factors had pride of place in the estimation of most (though not all) historians. After the nationalist historians of the late nineteenth century, who did see slavery as central to the causing of the war, historians, reflecting their times, seemed to stress everything but slavery. Economic differences between North and South, geographic determinism, irrationality and incompetence all seemed more central to historians in the first half of the twentieth century than did slavery. This is ironic because in the last half century, slavery has resumed its position as the crucial issue, without which the coming of the Civil War makes little sense.

In this podcast, I summarize the issues and discuss the conclusions of Thomas J. Pressly, in his book, “Americans Interpret Their Civil War.”

Podcast: Embed