Random House N.Y. The War Before the War

“[A] sweeping and fascinating book . . . a long, festering story of political disunion, mapped through many voices. . . . Delbanco writes lyrically . . . and with a genuine sense of tragedy . . . The War Before the War presents a clear narrative of the legal and political history of [how], self-tortured by the slavery question, a ‘nation’ descended into disunion.” —David Blight, New York Review of Books “A valuable book, reflective as well as jarring . . . Delbanco, an eminent and prolific scholar of American literature, is well suited to recounting . . . the most violent and enduring conflict in American history.” — Sean Wilentz, New York Times Book Review “Delbanco . . . excavates the past in ways that illuminate the present. He lucidly shows [how] in the name of avoiding conflict . . . the nation was brought to the brink and into the breach. This is a story about compromises—and a riveting, unsettling one at that.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times "Sweeping . . . stirring . . . Delbanco relates many thrilling escape-and-rescue episodes. . . . Well worth reading . . . for those interested in exploring the roots of today's social problems and learning about early efforts to resolve them.” —David Reynolds, Wall Street Journal “Delbanco has written a compelling new synthesis about the cultural, social, and political ruptures around fugitivism leading up to the war. Moreover, Delbanco’s skills as a literature scholar give his work an advantage over other historians, integrating effective literary analysis into this political history . . . The War before the War will be particularly impactful because it grapples with literary, social, and political history, making it a useful new history of slavery and the sectional crisis.” — Early American Literature “A compelling, elegantly written account of how fugitive slave laws laid bare ‘the moral crisis’ in the hearts and minds of antebellum Americans.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “In The War Before the War, Andrew Delbanco narrates this history in lucid prose and with a moral clarity that is best described as terrifying . . . One of the most admirable features of this truly great book is the subtlety with which Delbanco considers his story’s applicability to our own moment.” — Alan Jacobs, The Weekly Standard “Many present-day historians dealing with issues of race and slavery tend to approach the past as prosecuting attorneys eager to bring all those culprits in the past to justice. They indict some in the antebellum period for their timidity and caution because they feared a war and did not know what to do, and applaud others who turned out to guess right about the course of events. Delbanco has too subtle a sensibility, too fine an appreciation of the tragedy of life, for that crude kind of history writing. Although he describes the brutality of slavery with force and clarity, and his feelings about slavery are never in doubt, he nevertheless displays a compassion for all the people, slaveholders... ...