Book excerpt: In this book Professor Roger Ransom examines the economic and political factors that led to the attempt by Southerners to dissolve the Union in 1860, and the equally determined effort of Northerners to preserve it. Ransom argues that the system of capitalist slavery in the South not only "caused" the Civil War by producing tensions that could not be resolved by compromise; it also played a crucial role in the outcome of that war by crippling the southern war effort at the same time that emancipation became a unifying issue for the North. Ransom also carefully examines the impact that four years of war and the emancipation of slaves had both on the defeated South and the victorious North. -- From publisher's description.