Irrepressible Conflict: The Cause of the American Civil War

About the Book

The Civil War resulted from the insistence of Southern “firebrands” that the 1820 restrictions on where slavery could be practiced in the Western territories of the USA be removed. And the dogged determination of some Northerners to restrict the brutal treatment of blacks and finally put slavery on the road to extinction. In the 1850’s big shoes dropped one after another in staccato fashion to dash such hopes. The final straws were the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 saying blacks weren’t even people and Congress had no power to restrict slavery anywhere ! And Civil War was going on in “bleeding Kansas” between adherents of the two stances. John Brown was radicalized there by the sacking of Abolitionist stronghold Lawrence. He and his sons killed some Jayhawkers (slavery adherents) from Missouri. Then Brown, his sons, and a few others, lit a fuse in Oct 1859 by a hare brained scheme to seize the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to arm slaves and precipitate action to free them. So when Lincoln was elected in 1860—the South bolted! As they had threatened for 15 years. America was almost destroyed. Until July 4, 1863 when two Union victories insured: “that these honored dead (800,000) shall not have died in vain” Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg, Pa Nov. 1863.

About the Author

Author Stanley Harmon was born in the Ozarks in rural Arkansas in 1935. An ancestor and others of his kin fought in Confederate units during the Civil War He earned his Bachelor’s in science at the University of Arkansas in Jan 1957 and later did graduate studies at the Masters and PhD level in Washington DC. He has a Liberal Arts education, as well as emphasis in the sciences including several college courses and even post graduate courses in history. He served in the U. S Army at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC in 1958 and 1959 during which service in the Medical Service Corps he was sent with a team of scientists to the A Bomb test site near Reno, Nevada to determine the killing power of t a Neutron A Bomb. That service gave him opportunity to visit iconic Battlefields of the Civil War and he wrote a history of the Civil War as follow on to an essay he wrote as a college student about the battle of Gettysburg... During that time, he considered attending Graduate School to become a Professor of History but when he got back from Nevada he did the bacteriological investigation of a mass food poisoning on a train bound for Washington that was caused by the gangrene germ. He subsequently spent the rest of his career as a research scientist with the US Food and Drug Administration in Washington, DC becoming a methods expert and World authority of the gangrene germ the commonest cause in that time of bacterial food poisoning. He was a Professor in the FDA Graduate School for Microbiology and as frequent guest lecturer at Universities and at scientific conferences. He also published some 50 papers in scientific journals about his research and chapters for the most prestigious books in the field. In retirement, he has authored several books including one about Presidential history and this one about the cause of the American Civil War in 2011 as well as one about Bipolar Disorder and another about Science.