Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War

Half Slave and Half Free is a succinct and persuasive treatment of the basic issues and social transformations that precipitated the Civil War. Now, in a revised edition that includes a new preface and afterword and a revised and expanded bibliographic essay, Bruce Levine’s impressive work is brought completely up to date.

Its argument is still compelling: that a popular basis for the Civil War developed out of the far-reaching and divisive changes in American life that came with the incomplete Revolution of 1776 changes that led to two very distinct social systems, one based on slavery, the other on free labor, which eventually made sectional differences within the framework of the Union irreconcilable.