For many Southerners, the secession of South Carolina from the United States on December 20, 1860, represented the beginning of the end: a final, long-sought resolution to the bitter political fight with the North over slavery and states' rights. Within weeks, the landowners who made up a majority of legislators in the Southern states were taking their cue from the leading men of South Carolina and declaring their own states free and independent members of the Confederate States of America. Finally, the people of the South were free to live, conduct business, and make laws as they saw fit, and the South became the equal of the North— perhaps even the greater power. An agricultural economy that provided the world with its most essential goods, the sheer size of the new country (as large as western continental Europe), the fighting abilities of Southern men, and...