Shelby Foote begins volume one of his Civil War trilogy with the resignation of Jefferson Davis from the Senate in 1861 so that he could return to Mississippi and take over the Confederate States of America. Davis takes the attitude that the slave states just can't take it anymore. The slave states have been pushed by the federal government to the limit to what they can endure. The Confederates have no choice but to leave the United States and form their own government to protect their legal right to property in human beings.

Foote's book volume one is valuable in explaining the thinking of the South and the slave owners.