Year of meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the election that brought on the Civil War

Chapter 1. A Nation with Its "Hands Full": The Republic on the Eve of 1860

Chapter 2. "Douglas or Nobody": The Democrats

Chapter 3. Principles and the "Duty to Recognize" None: The Constitutional Union and Liberty Parties

Chapter 4. "Moving Heaven and Earth": The Republicans

Chapter 5. "Beyond the Power of Surgery": The Democrats, Again

Chapter 6. "Lincoln Is the Next President. I Will Go South": The Campaigns

Chapter 7. "The Union Is Dissolved": The Lower South Secedes

Chapter 8. "Others to Share the Burdern": Two Governments Prepare

Chapter 9. "All Our Labor Is Lost": Compromise Committees and the Washington Peace Conference.