Prologue to Conflict

A comprehensive analysis that more nearly defines the complex limits of the problem of this intricate legislative episode.

~American Historical Review

A succinct, useful book dealing with the Compromise of 1850 and the larger issues which led to the Civil War.

~Howard R. Lamar, Yale University

Bravo to the University Press of Kentucky for making Holman Hamilton's landmark Prologue to Conflict available once more for student readers. Hamilton's revisionist work credited Stephen A. Douglas with hammering out the crucial compromise that averted civil war for a decade. Hamilton sifted through the maze of rhetoric and uncovered the role of the Texas bondholder lobby in lubricating the machinery of political change. And Hamilton's analysis of the crucial House and Senate roll-call votes was in its day a methodological breakthrough. All in all, Prologue to Conflict remains a historiographical classic, a timeless book essential to understanding the Middle Period of American History.

~John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History,

Hamilton has found drama and excitement. His presentation has all the suspense of a novel, even though the informed reader knows the plot at the start. Moreover, his analyses are incisive and provocative.

~Journal of American History

A great stride toward an understanding of a period and a 'crisis' that have been all too lightly regarded in the past.

~Journal of Southern History