"The role the rural South and its plantation system played in the secession of the Confederate states is well established, but historian Frank Towers contends that we should look just as closely at the South's urban centers. An exemplary feat of research, The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War sheds light on the dynamics of secession by concentrating on pivotal sociopolitical shifts in the South's three largest cities - Baltimore, New Orleans, and St. Louis."--Jacket.