A Disease in the Public Mind, Thomas Fleming
A Disease in the Public Mind, Thomas Fleming
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A Disease in the Public Mind
A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War

Author: Thomas Fleming

Narrator: William Hughes

Unabridged: 11 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/07/2013

Synopsis

By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harpers Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a holy martyr in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern slavocrats like Thomas Jefferson. And Northern envy only exacerbated the Souths greatest fear: race war. In the sixty years preceding the outbreak of civil war, Northern and Southern fanatics ramped up the struggle over slavery. By the time they had become intractable enemies, only the tragedy of a bloody civil war could save the Union. In this riveting and character-driven history, one of Americas most respected historians traces the disease in the public minddistortions of reality that seized large numbers of Americansin the decades-long run-up to the Civil War.

About Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is a distinguished historian and acclaimed author of more than fifty books.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jay on March 16, 2019

A strong 4 stars bordering on 5, this book is a must read for any Civil War enthusiast. It should be the first book read prior to the start of the battles of the Civil War. It covers the curse of slavery in America from the colonial era up to just after the start of the hostilities of the war and is......more

Goodreads review by Joshua on July 27, 2013

Like most major historical events, the causes of war are complex. It is easy to criticize Fleming if you believe the view that the cause of the American Civil War was simply "slavery." Moving beyond fourth-grade history books, Fleming cites example after example of how extremist rhetoric in both the......more

Goodreads review by CoachJim on August 23, 2020

The enormity of the Civil War’s tragedy grows even larger when we realize that the United States is the only country in the world that fought such a horrific war to end slavery. Other nations with large slave populations, such as Great Britain, which had 850,00 slaves in its West Indies islands, Cub......more

Goodreads review by Erik on January 03, 2018

This is offered as a revisionist history of the causes of the American Civil War. It is such insofar as its author treats the war as contingent, not inevitable, seeing the perspectives of important populations, both North and South, as being fundamentally mistaken. To simplify, Fleming faults the int......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on August 25, 2013

Thomas Fleming continues to be my favorite popular historian (and, truth be told, one of my favorite historians period). I was first turned onto him with The New Dealer's War, and I try to read what I can of his when I can. When I saw he was taking on the Civil War, I had to request it almost immedi......more

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