Much of my understanding of pro-slavery thought comes from Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder. Calhoun was dead by the time of the war but he was the sou

Much of my understanding of pro-slavery thought comes from Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder. Calhoun was dead by the time of the war but he was the south's most important intellectual and he was at the center of American politics from the War of 1812 that he helped start until he died in 1850 after paving the way for the Civil War. 2 speeches that are really good in terms of understanding the motivations of both sides at the beginning of the Civil War are the Cornerstone Speech by the Confederate VP (Alexander H Stephens) and Lincoln's first inaugural. Neither speech is particularly hard to read especially with Wikipedia available to look up unfamiliar terminology (i.e. "internal improvements" = 19th century name for infrastructure spending and "domestic institutions" = polite euphemism for slavery). Its especially fortunate for the sake of history that Stephens came right out and said what the Confederates believed because it makes it easy to refute the "it was about economics not slavery" line of argument from Confederate apologists. Lincoln's first inaugural is important as well because it refutes the "it was always only about slavery" argument you sometimes hear in response. One rather interesting angle in the Cornerstone Speech is how Stephens cites Adam Smith's economics. In the north, the economic nationalist "American School" of Friedrich List and Henry Carey (Carey was Lincoln's primary economic advisor) was more influential than Adam Smith. Unless you're really interested in reading economic theory, I'd say the Wikipedia article on the American School of economics is sufficient to get the gist of the economic ideas that influenced Lincoln. I'm not entirely sure what to recommend regarding the abolitionist movement because that's an area that's already heavily emphasized in the American education system, at least in my experience. I'm also not sure what to recommend regarding the wave of immigration that finally shifted control of the federal government from south to north in 1860 but this would definitely show up in the Census data and you can still see evidence of it today in how white people from the south are more likely to have English last names than white people from other parts of the country (the mid 1800s wave of immigration was heavily Irish and German). Another great source for learning about what happened is to get a chance to talk to tour guides at the Civil War battlefields. I think most of my history professors from when I was majoring in history also did tours of the Gettysburg battlefield. The best time to visit is when it isn't as crowded. In the case of Gettysburg, that means avoiding the first 2 weeks of July (reenactment week followed by biker week) unless you specifically want to see the reenactment because the traffic is notoriously awful for those 2 weeks and everything is going to be packed.