This Great Struggle ─ America's Civil War

The author, a historian tells the story of what many regard as the defining event in United States history. Referring to the war that was raging across parts of the American landscape, Abraham Lincoln told Congress in 1862, "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope on Earth." Lincoln recognized what was at stake in the American Civil War: not only freedom for 3.5 million slaves but also survival of self-government in the last place on Earth where it could have the opportunity of developingfreely. While covering all theaters of war, he emphasizes the importance of action in the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River in determining its outcome. He argues that the Civil War had a distinct purpose that was understood by most of its participants: it was primarily a conflict over the issue of slavery. The soldiers who filled the ranks of the armies on both sides knew what they were fighting for. The outcome of the war-after its beginnings at Fort Sumter to the Confederate surrender four years later was the result of the actions and decisions made by those soldiers and millions of other Americans.

Steven E. Woodworth is professor of history at Texas Christian University and author, co-author, or editor of twenty-seven books. He is a two-time winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York Civil War Round Table, a two-time finalist for the Peter Seaborg Award of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, and a winner of the Grady McWhiney Award of the Dallas Civil War Round Table for lifetime contribution to the study of Civil War history. His most recent book is Manifest Destinies: America's Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War.