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

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.

In early 1860, pundits and political operatives across America confidently predicted the victory of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential election. Douglas, after all, led the Democrats, the only party that bridged North and South. But the Democracy would splinter over the issue of slavery, opening the way for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low share of the popular vote. Year of Meteors re-creates the cascade of events that confounded political bosses, set North and South on the road to disunion, and put not Stephen Douglas but his livelong rival in the White House--Cover, p. 2.