Preface: The first duty
America's original sin : slavery from 1619-1790
"A struggle to the death" : war cannot be separated from ideology, politics or religion
"I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies" : religion ideology, and modern war
"They shall be your bond-men forever" : human beings as property
"The privilege of belonging to the superior race" : slavery and national expansion : the compromise of 1850
"A gross violation of a sacred pledge" : the Kansas-Nebraska act and collapse of the Whig Party
"I will be heard!" : Religion, ideology and the abolitionist movement
"An institution sanctioned by god" : southern religious support of slavery
"The triumphs of Christianity rest, this very hour on slavery"
"With god as our champion" : the confederate union of church and state
"One after another they have closed the heavy doors upon him" : the Dred Scott decision
"Portents hang on all the arches of the horizon, threatening to darken the land" : the bloody battle for Kansas
"Mr. President, I wish to remind you that General Jackson is dead, sir."
"Cuba must be ours"
"The final kingdom has arisen, and the divine redeemer has come to reign."
"The south will never submit to such humiliation"
"Whom the gods intend to destroy, they first make mad"
"The heather is on fire" : politics, religion and war
"Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea, Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free" : the emancipation proclamation
"I knew what I was fighting for" : Black soldiers in the Civil War and after
Reconstruction, and redemption : the failure to win the peace
The failure of will : reconstruction's end and return to white rule
"There was born in the South a new religion the noble confederacy and the lost cause"
Epilogue: "I can't breathe" : the past is always present.