Amanda Foreman

Towards Zero: the gruesome countdown to the American Civil War

The North and South had been bitterly divided over slavery since the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, but the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 would prove the point of no return

Coloured lithograph of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, 12-13 April 1861. [Lithograph by Currier & Ives, New York, 1861/ Getty Images]
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  • The Demon of Unrest: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Road to Civil War

    Erik Larson

    William Collins, pp. 592, £25

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