This course describes and analyzes the causes, character, and consequences of America's greatest crisis. The time period is from the sectional crisis of the late antebellum period of the 1840s to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The class will examine the roots of sectional conflict, the course, conduct and consequences of war, and the efforts to reconstruct the nation. The goal will be to understand how and why events happened as they did, whether the fundamental conflicts of the war were solved by Reconstruction, and why the Civil War has occupied such an important place in American history and memory. HA