What you will learn

• How generations of historians have explained the road to secession, the causes and conduct of the war, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves
• Slavery's central role in the southern and national economies
• How the issue of the expansion of slavery came to dominate national politics
• The dramatic change in historians' interpretations of the period in the last two generations
• How the Civil War and Reconstruction turned on issues of continued relevance today