"The Underground Railroad to the North was salvation for many US slaves before the Civil War. But during the same decades, thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico. In South to Freedom historian Alice Baumgartner tells the story of Mexico's rise as an antislavery republic and a promised land for enslaved people in North America. She describes how Mexico's...

A biography profiling the life and military career of Robert E. Lee, who after years of service in the U.S. Army, resigned to serve as general of the Confederate army during the U.S. Civil War. Includes source notes and timeline.

"In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our sixteenth president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue, Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity. --

The spellbinding story behind the longest debate in U.S. Senate history: the Compromise of 1850, which brought together Senate luminaries on the eve of the Civil War in a desperate effort to save the Union.