Advance praise: 'Drawing on his own highly regarded work on the origins of the Civil War and his command of current historiography, John Ashworth has produced a compelling and lucid account of the road to disunion. He convincingly places slavery where it belongs - at the center of the era's social and political conflict - and makes the slaves themselves important actors in the story.' Eric Foner, Columbia University 'This is an outstanding achievement. John Ashworth has given us a meticulous but very readable account of how the major political ideologies of the antebellum era took shape and of the roles they played in bringing on the Civil War. No one has treated that important subject with as much thoroughness and subtlety.' Bruce Levine, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 'The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861 is a deft and accessible summation of John Ashworth's major re-interpretation of the origins of the Civil War. It appears at a vital moment, when scholars are reviving long-discredited claims that the Civil War was an accident and emancipation its 'inadvertent' by-product. Against this rising tide of neo-revisionism, Ashworth offers a compelling re-affirmation of slavery as the fundamental issue in the sectional crisis.' James Oakes, author of Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States

John Ashworth is Professor of American History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of numerous books, including Slavery, Capitalism and Politics in the Antebellum Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2007), the second volume of which won the James A. Rawley award given by the Southern Historical Association.

1. The United States in 1848: a nation imperiled; 2. Crisis at mid-century, 1848-51; 3. Immigrants, alcoholics and their enemies: ethnocultural issues, 1851-4; 4. Preparing for disaster: the politics of slavery, 1851-4; 5. Political maelstrom, 1854-6; 6. North and south, republican and democrat; 7. Political polarisation, 1857-60; 8. Secession and the outbreak of war, 1860-1; 9. Conclusion: slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War.