"Exploring a critical lesson about our nation that is as timely today as ever, Decade of Disunion shows how the country came apart during the enveloping slavery crisis of the 1850s. The Mexican war brought vast new territories to the United States, precipitating a crisis over whether to expand slavery to the new lands. With that question inflaming both North and South, it became clear that not even the compromise legislation of 1850 could quell the rising regional tensions. Pro- and antislavery advocates flooded Kansas, turning it into a bloody battleground. Then John Brown's ill-planned 1859 attack at the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, designed to ignite a slave revolt, electrified much of the North and outraged the South. Through the 1850s, South Carolina, whose economy depended heavily on slave labor, struggled over whether to secede alone or to do so only in conjunction with other states. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, the country's antislavery epicenter, 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 election of Lincoln, South Carolina finally seceded, leading the South out of the Union. Decade of Disunion tells the story of this great American struggle through the actions of 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."-- Dust jacket flap.