Ordeal of the Union

• 1. Introduction

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  Ordeal of the Union is an eight-volume series of history books, published between 1947 and 1971. It covers mid-19th century America, focused on the Civil War and the years that led into it. Historian Allan Nevins wrote it, publishing two volumes at a time across four separate stretches: 1947, 1950-1959 and 1960, and 1971. The series carries three different titles depending on which volumes you're looking at, though people usually call the whole thing by just one of them. And it stops short of where Nevins meant it to end. What is the shape of a history book series built this way, and why does it end where it does?

• 2. Three Titles, One Series

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  The first two books share one title: Ordeal of the Union. Each carries its own subtitle. The 1947 opener is Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852. Its companion, also from 1947, is A House Dividing, 1852-1857. The third and fourth volumes move under a different banner, The Emergence of Lincoln. Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859, came first. Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861, followed. Both were published in 1950. The final four volumes take a third title, The War for the Union. The Improvised War, 1861-1862, appeared in 1959. War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863, followed in 1960. The Organized War, 1863-1864, and The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865, both came out in 1971. Three titles cover eight books, yet readers and booksellers call the whole run Ordeal of the Union. Publishers have since reissued individual volumes under that single umbrella title. Nevins, though, had not planned to stop at volume eight.

• 3. An Unfinished Ending

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  Nevins planned two additional volumes to carry Ordeal of the Union into the Reconstruction era. He died in 1971, the same year the seventh and eighth volumes were published. Neither Reconstruction volume was ever written. For those last two books, The Organized War and The Organized War to Victory, Nevins won the U.S. National Book Award in History. Ordeal of the Union crossed its finish line in 1971, the same year it stopped short of the Reconstruction story Nevins had planned to tell.