Fire Consuming the House of Union

Civil wars are rarely started by moderates. The American conflict of 1861-1865 was shaped not by the exhausted compromisers who spent decades trying to hold the republic together, but by the men on both flanks who decided, each for their own reasons, that the centre could no longer hold - and that burning it down was preferable to reform. On the Southern side, the Fire-Eaters formed the most con...