This study critically surveys the changing and highly controversial literature surrounding the American Civil War era, from contemporary interpretations up to the present. The racial question was one of the central causes of the war; there was recognition of the need for America to conform wholly to the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal". This moral dimension lies at the heart of the historiographical debate, and just as one group of historians has attempted to play down the moral significance of slavery and the war, so another has insisted upon its paramount importance. The book analyses historians' attitudes and assumptions, and suggests that each writer's perspective was partly determined by the dicates of time and place. The six chapters deal, repsectively, with the American historical profession, slavery, abolitionism, the causes of civil war, the civil war itself and reconstruction.