Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War

by Maury Klein

Book Overview

"Illuminating and well-written. . . . Deserves a place in the highest ranks of Civil War scholarship."-- The Cleveland Plain Dealer In November 1860, telegraph lines carried the news that Abraham... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679447474
• ISBN13: 9780679447474
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Truly outstanding book

I can only echo the previous reviewers who have stated how good this book is. Maury Klein has written a well researched, but highly readable account of the last months of James Buchanan's presidency and the beginning of Abraham Lincoln's first term. In vivid detail, Klein discusses the secession crisis in the South, but focuses mostly on South Carolina. Klein gives great mini-biographies of the differing players and uses tons of diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts to really make the story flow. From a research standpoint, the book is history at its best, but it is also great history because it is engaging and lively and you want to just keep reading. If you read just one book on the coming of the Civil War, this might just be the one to pick up.

Wonderful Chronicle of United States Falling Into Civil War

Maury Klien is a very good storyteller and thorough historian. Combining both of these skills often seems difficult in some popular histories, but when it works it produces a highly readable and insightful understanding of the past.Klien tells the story of the Union's slide into the abyss of Civil War - with most of the focus on the period between Lincoln's election and the firing on Ft. Sumter. Using many first-person accounts, he gives an immediacy and presence to this tale that helps the reader feel he is there as the great decisions, positions and vaccilations are taken during this critical period.Days of Defiance reminds the reader that the Civil War was perhaps an irrepressable conflict. Despite attempts to conciliate and compromise, the Republicans in the North would not brook the extension of slavery. The South saw the North's hostitity to the spread of the institution and the loss of it's hold on the national government as threatening to the slave based economy in the states where it was legal. Although many tried to find a middle path, the sectional interests were too diametricly opposed to ward off war.The focus of the book are the events during the twilight of the Buchanan Administration, the struggle in Congress to do something that could produce a compromise and the efforts of South Carolina to dissolve the Union. The Buchanan Administration, reflecting the political base and culture of the President, was amazing in its inability to produce a policy that would at least address the growing crisis. The president elect, waiting for four months to assume office after his election, had to balance the act of satisfying factions of the Republican Party in putting together the first Republican Administration with the need to adopt a posture that did not accelerate a crisis brought to its head by his election. In trying not to accelerate the crisis before he could claim the reins of the government, he also had to maintain his positions regarding the spread of slavery and unlawfulness of secession -- positions that had garnered him his victory and the support of the North.The portraits of the president and the president-elect and their minions are fascinating. Lincoln's genious for leadership shows through some early trials and mistakes as he assumes his first administrative office. Buchanan's lack of support, reliance on friends who did not have the Administration's best interests at heart and personal unwillingness to adopt any policy helped create a vacuum that South Carolinian seccessionists gladly filled. Buchanan's secretaries -- particularly Floyd of the War department-- exhibited loyalty to their factions that in some cases could best be described as treasonous. Lincoln needed to pull men into his cabinet who in three or four cases thought themselves superior to the president-elect and saw themselves as "managing" the new leader, while setting the tone and discipline necessary to ensure that the Lincoln Administration wou

History that Reads Like a Novel

Maury Klein has done an outstanding job of making the roll up to the Civil War pop off the pages. From the dour last days of the Buchanan administration to the careful balancing of public and private interests by Lincoln, all set against the backdrop of moves by secessionists in South Carolina, Florida and D.C., Klein covers the steps and missteps that might have headed off the war in a manner. This is a fantastic work, written with the critical eye of a historian, but influenced by the wit and timing of a novelist.

Times gone by...

Maury Klein does a superb job of detailing the events that lead up to the Civil War, and gives the reader some excellent background material in regards to the political viewpoints of the day.The book was very easy to read and flowed smoothy from one chapter to the next. You don't get bogged down in trivial matters nor does the author drag on with the usual rhetoric of modern day thought superimposed on past issues. His high level of detailed research shows through in every chapter.A very well done book, that deserves a spot on your list of "must reads" in regards to the Civil War.

A shot heard 'round the world

"Days of Defiance" deserves to rank with "Battle Cry of Freedom," the Pulitzer-winner of a few years back, in its drama, pacing and sense of context. It is among the rare Civil War books that do not wallow in detail, that amplify the poignance of flawed people making decisions the reader knows to be tragic, and that kindle the sense that the story is about America, not about which general charged into which thicket with which regiment. The author picks a tightly circumscribed period in which to tell his story: roughly the five months before the bombardment of Fort Sumter (although he synopsizes the previous half-century to give essential background). The highest praise I can think of for this book is to say that he makes those five months, yes, suspenseful. Follow this book's enigmatic Lincoln into another brilliant Civil War book, "Lincoln at Gettysburg," and you have a window into a period truly lit by fire.