"The causes of the Civil War brings into sharp focus the major issues, real or imaginied, that divided northerners and southerners in a disastrous national crisis. Juxtaposing articles and speeches by men who lived through the struggle with the interpretations of post-Civil War historians, Kenneth M. Stampp brings face to face spokesmen for the major schools of thought. Was slavery the determinig cause? Can the blame be laid either to 'Black Republican' agitation or to the ruthless machinations of a 'Slave Power' conspiracy? Was the war an 'irrepressible conflict' between an agrarian South and an industrialized North? This volume provides no answers. Rather, the readings--including several new selections--reveal the uncertainty about the war's causes that has repeatedly driven historians back to the sources. They help us to enlarge our knowledge and deepen our understanding of the differences that set brother against brother. "--Page 4 of cover.