Excerpt from Political History of Secession: To the Beginning of the American Civil War The preface to a volume like this is usually the last and the hardest thing to write. I have repeatedly rewritten this, in a vain effort to make it satisfactory to myself. I do not propose to expand it by telling what the book is about, or to apologize for writing it. The title and table of contents sufficiently indicate its general character. I have endeavored in a volume of moderate size to give a concise history of the development of the causes, of which slavery was the chief, but not the only one, that culminated in the Civil War. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.