Abraham Lincoln's November 1860 election set in motion one of the most extraordinary series of events in American history. The secession of South Carolina in December, followed by similar actions in other Southern states, exposed the essential weakness of the federal government in Washington, presided over by James Buchanan, a well-intentioned but vacillating lame duck - cautious, fearful, obstinate.

On Capitol Hill, Congress was in deadly gridlock, doing what it has always done best - talking and talking and talking while the nation came apart. Never in our country's experience has the separation of powers been more separate or more powerless.

As Days of Defiance unfurls from Springfield, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., to Charleston, South Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama - culminating with the portentous shots finally fired in April - Mr. Klein describes the social, cultural, and political currents of mid-nineteenth-century America, and the reader comes to realize how close the United States (as we know it) came to collapsing, and how important leadership is in critical times.