The Crisis is a historical novel by Winston Churchill. The novel is set in St. Louis, Missouri, in the years leading up to the first battles of the American Civil War, and follows the story of Stephen Brice, a man with Union and abolitionist sympathies, and his involvement with a Southern family. The novel focuses on the romantic tension between four main characters: Virginia Carvel, a fashionable Southern woman, Clarence Colfax, her cousin who becomes a stalwart cavalier in the Southern cause, Stephen Brice, an earnest young lawyer from Boston with Union sympathies, and Eliphalet Hopper, a hard-working clerk with ambitions to advance himself 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 Stephen Brice, who becomes a devoted admirer and proponent after a personal interview with Lincoln on the eve of the Freeport debate. The novel is essentially a story about Lincoln, as his philosophy is a dynamic presence throughout the story.