Course examines the sectional controversy, slavery, and constitutional crises that pushed the nation toward civil war. It then follows the conflict through its major battles, military and political strategies, and the pressures it placed on the home front. Students will trace these events through the lives of the people who shaped and endured them, including John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and Mary Chesnut.