Publisher's Synopsis
"Sumter" is a companion to my multi-volume series "Antebellum--- the Long Road to Sumter." "Sumter" was originally published (2017) as "The Initiation of the War between the States" but my research has led me to call that war "The War to Prevent Southern Independence." I was raised in rural North Carolina and have wounded Confederate veterans on both sides of my family (Malvern Hill and Core Creek). Several branches of my family were also close to Sherman's march and near the Bentonville, NC battle. Nonetheless, my formal schooling (all in North Carolina and Georgia) presented a monolithic Union-view of events of the "Civil War." It was not until I started devoting time in my 50s to family genealogy that various facts seemed to not add up (such as the sequence of secession of the Confederate states). So, I started digging a little deeper; and the more I dug, the more ignorant I discovered myself to be. I have wanted to delve deeply into this history for some time; and in 2017, I was motivated to concentrate some of my efforts here because of the recent interest in removing monuments to Confederate soldiers, generals and politicians from southern states. I had intended to start with a solid analysis of the economic and social conditions in the US from the 1700s and proceed from there. But, the mass of materials soon overwhelmed me and I decided to subdivide my efforts into parts. I did not intend to begin with the material in this book (1860-1861) and did not. But, I have found a wealth of primary and secondary sources, which made the research of this period relatively easy. Moreover, there are several story lines that I was shocked to discover, which are worth more public attention. In addition, I was not surprised to see partisan opinions and propaganda in documents from some of the direct participants, but I became somewhat dismayed at the way secondary sources regurgitated these events with no critical analysis. I find that the modern scholarly works and the textbooks simply reproduce the distorted position (i.e., propaganda) that was largely produced in the northern media during and after the war. The saying that "the victors write the history books" certainly is true.
