Patricide in the House Divided

By George B. Forgie

Book Overview

“One of the most ambitious, ingenious, and sophisticated works of psychohistory yet to appear. . . .Forgie’s thesis challenges an entire tradition of American historiography.” ?David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books

George B. Forgie argues that the crisis of the Union was decisively structured by one obvious, overbearing fact: the dominant figures in American public life in the 1850s were born in the early Republic. They were raised to think of its founders as immortal fathers whom they must imitate, themselves as brothers, and the Union as an inherited house to be preserved.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393000354
• ISBN13: 9780393000351
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

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I read Mr. Forgie's book after taking a class that he tought at the University of Texas about the pre-civil war era. While I learned a great deal in his class, his book took the analysis of the pre-civil war era to a new level. In addition to being well written and exciting to read, Mr. Forgie's book takes a unique approaach to the subject by tracing the psychological development of both Lincoln and American society as a whole to explain the mentality of a nation willing to go to war against itself.