Le Sud et la guerre civile américaine : le piège de la Sécession

This article places the US Civil War and Southern secession in the narrative of American history since the colonial era. It argues that the South, Virginia particularly, held a prominent place in American history and political life until the 1840s and that recurrent threats of secession (or its less extreme variants) express long existing tension between the States and federal power. However, slavery, an issue that Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court were unable to settle satisfactorily by the late 1850s, as well as the election of Lincoln in 1860, pushed die-hard Southerners to lead the South into secession and war