The Town That Started the Civil War - Hardcover

About the Author: Nat Brandt is the author of The Man Who Tried to Burn New York, which won the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award, and is a former editor at American Heritage.

The place was Oberlin, an Ohio college town and Underground Railroad station. The year was 1858. Claiming a law higher than the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, scores of blacks and whites foiled the return of escaped Kentucky slave John Price. Focusing on the prosecution of 36 rescuers who paid the price of fines and prison, Brandt re-creates the scene and the action. With a journalist's feel for detail and compelling human interest, he builds on Jacob Shipherd's original History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue (1859) and William Cochran's Western Reserve and the Fugitive Slave Law: A Prelude to the Civil War (1920; Da Capo, 1972. reprint). Brandt brings to life moral conflict, politics, personalities, stategies, and theology that divided the Union and induced the nation's bloodiest war. Recommended for antebellum, Civil War, and general American history collections. Brandt is the author of the well-received history The Man Who Tried To Burn New York (LJ 8/86). History Book Club and BOMC selections.
- Thomas J. Davis, Univ. at Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.