In this spellbinding history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson’s <I>Battle Cry of Freedom</I>. Where other scholars have seen the conflict as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield paints it as America’s greatest failure: a breakdown of society caused by the infusion of evangelical religion into the world of politics. <P>The price of that failure was horrific, but the carnage accomplished what statesmen could not: It made the United States one nation and eliminated the divisive force of slavery. The victorious North moved ahead, a land of innovation and industry. Religion was supplanted by a gospel of economic and scientific progress, and the South was left behind. The "fiery trial" of war transformed our country—a conflagration captured in vivid detail in <I>America Aflame</I>.</P>