I’ll Take My Stand

What caused the Southern States to leave the Union—and why did the sectional crisis become a devastating war?

In I’ll Take My Stand: Defending the Causes of Southern Secession, Jeb Smith presents a forceful challenge to conventional accounts of America’s most consequential conflict. Drawing on speeches, newspapers, state resolutions, political writings, and other historical sources, Smith argues that secession cannot be understood through a single cause. Instead, he examines the competing ideas, regional interests, and constitutional disputes that divided the country.

Beginning with the antebellum understanding of the United States as a voluntary union of sovereign states, Smith explores the roles of states’ rights, self-government, federal power, tariffs, economic rivalry, slavery, religion, and political philosophy. He distinguishes the motivations of the Cotton States from those of the Upper South, considers the experiences of Confederate Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona, and Indian Territory, and revisits the events surrounding Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops.

Provocative, extensively argued, and unapologetically “revisionist,” I’ll Take My Stand asks readers to reconsider familiar assumptions about Abraham Lincoln, the Confederacy, and the transformation of the American republic.

Readers interested in constitutional and Southern history, political decentralization, or a New England author’s brave, source-driven interpretation of the Civil War will find a compelling challenge to the war’s commonly accepted narrative.

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