The Civil War: A Concise History

One can no more know what caused an event as complex as the Civil War than whether it could have been avoided. This is not to say key factors cannot be isolated: Slavery caused the Civil War, but in what ways? Disagreements over questions of sovereignty and Constitutional authority caused the Civil War, but how? Northerners and Southerners saw themselves as different,but why did those differences turn lethal and ultimately lead to horrifi c violence?