Publisher Description
By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper's Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a "holy martyr" in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern "slavocrats" like Thomas Jefferson. And Northern envy only exacerbated the South's greatest fear: race war. In the sixty years preceding the outbreak of civil war, Northern and Southern fanatics ramped up the struggle over slavery. By the time they had become intractable enemies, only the tragedy of a bloody civil war could save the Union.
In this riveting and character-driven history, one of America's most respected historians traces the "disease in the public mind"—distortions of reality that seized large numbers of Americans—in the decades-long run-up to the Civil War.
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“Do we really need another book about the Civil
War? Mr. Fleming makes a solid, compelling case in the affirmative. His
narrative weaves new threads through this seminal event in American history.
Through his exposition of largely ignored events he affords us a clearer, much
more succinct picture of antebellum America…Fleming’s scholarship digs further
into the prevailing Southern and Northern attitudes and mores of the period to
draw into sharper relief the more widespread concerns, political and public,
behind the Civil War…Certainly this book will provoke controversy of some
manner, but we can ill afford to take as gospel truth what has typically been
passed off as general history…A Disease
in the Public Mind is not simply a thoughtful read, it is another call
never to forget our sordid past, to face and conquer our fears.”
—
New York Journal of Books
About Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is the author of more than fifty books of historical fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestseller The Officers’ Wives. A distinguished historian, he has served as president of the Society of American Historians and the PEN American Center, spent ten years as chairman of the New York American Revolution Round Table, and is the senior scholar at the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge. He has received honors and awards from the Colonial Dames of America, National Catholic Press Association, New Jersey Historical Commission, and American Association for State and Local History. His awards include Boston University’s Burack Award for Lifetime Achievement in American History, the Union League Club of New York’s Abraham Lincoln Award for Outstanding Contributions to American Literature, and the 2012 Gomez Mill House Pioneer Award. In his honor, the American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia has named its annual book prize the Thomas Fleming Award. A frequent guest on PBS, A&E, and the History Channel, he has contributed articles to American Heritage, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and other magazines.
About William Hughes
William Hughes is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A professor of political science at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, he received his doctorate in American politics from the University of California at Davis. He has done voice-over work for radio and film and is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.