The Crisis

The Crisis By Winston ChurchillThe Crisis is an historical novel published in 1901 by the American novelist Winston Churchill. It was the best-selling book in the United States in 1901. The novel is set in the years leading up to the first battles of the American Civil War, mostly in the divided state of Missouri. It follows the fortunes of young Stephen Brice, a man with Union and abolitionist sympathies, and his involvement with a Southern family.Set in the author's home town of St. Louis, Missouri, the site of pivotal events in the western theater of the Civil War, with historically prominent citizens having both Northern and Southern sympathies. St. Louis was also the pre-war home of both Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman, each of whom is depicted in the book.Romantic tension develops between the four main characters: one, Virginia "Jinny" Carvel, the fashionable daughter of Comyn Carvel, a southern gentleman of the old school another, Clarence Maxwell Colfax, her n'er-do-well cousin who becomes a stalwart cavalier in the Southern cause in an effort to win Jinny's approval the third, Stephen A. Brice, an earnest young lawyer from Boston who antagonizes Virginia by his zeal for Abraham Lincoln's cause and the fourth, Eliphalet Hopper, a hard-working clerk with ambitions to advance himself both financially and socially.The crisis of the title is provoked by Abraham Lincoln's opposition to the extension of slavery, and the power of his personal integrity to win people to his cause, including the young lawyer Brice, who becomes a devoted admirer and proponent following a personal interview on the eve of the Freeport debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. This meeting depicts Lincoln's determination to advance the cause of freedom through the possible (and likely) sacrifice of his own political ambitions, and is related with a very believable combination of rustic humor and political acumen on Lincoln's part.The events prior to Lincoln's nomination and his eventual election to the Presidency elicit different reactions among the citizens of St. Louis, from the determined antipathy of the Southern sympathizers, to the equally determined patriotism of the population of German immigrants who have fled from their homeland and whose devotion to liberty has caused them to transfer their allegiance to the ideal of American democracy.