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A Disease in the Public Mind

A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War

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By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s 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 South’s greatest fear: race war. In the 60 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 America’s most respected historians traces the "disease in the public mind" - distortions of reality that seized large numbers of Americans - in the decades-long run-up to the Civil War.

©2013 Thomas Fleming (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Military Civil War War

Critic reviews

"The prolific Fleming, for decades a fixture among American historians, pinpoints public opinion as the proximate origin of the war.… Making a plausible presentation of antebellum attitudes and illusions, Fleming is sure to spark lively discussion about the Civil War." ( Booklist)
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A big thank you to author who through this book, has helped me, I think, to understand better the phenomenon of America.

This book highlights for me the rhythms and the rhymes in American history which resonate and continue even until today.

The very sad polarisation of the di-partite disease of the mind. The sanctimonious and vengeful on one side and the fearful of a race war on the other..

Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, R.E. Lee and Oliver Wendall Holmes, among others, show us a spirit of malice to none and charity to all that we all need and have needed since the terrible inception of the peculiar institution. It should have never been allowed, but it was, and we are now left to grapple with how to deal with the fallout.

The book leaves us saddened and wondering how it might have been, at so many stages, if cooler, more forgiving and more moderate voices had prevailed on both sides at so many forks in our history. Perhaps, if Lincoln had lived to complete his second term and truly bring the nation back together.

Hopefully we live and learn to bring that kind of spirit to thr forefront in our national consciousness and conversation..

With Malice to none and charity to all.

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This is a superb book that works at two levels. One is a history of the slavery issue from Independence until the end of the Civil War. The heroes are the people of goodwill, north and south (many of them slaveholders themselves) who saw the institution as an evil and sought ways to bring it to an end. The challenge was daunting if justice was to be done to all and would necessitate a gradual process that would depend on willingness to compromise. The villains were the extremists on both sides whose intransigence and willingness to resort to violence squeezed the moderate middle. In the end, the fanatics, North and South, made secession and war inevitable and the final resolution of the slavery issue proved less than satisfactory for both sides . At its deeper level this book is a warning about what happens when extremists demonize their opponent, are intransigent in their demands, reject conciliation and compromise, and push for confrontation. The parallels with what has happened in the US in the last two decades are terrifying. This book is a warning.

A warning for the United States today

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