All on Fire

Henry Mayer. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1998.

History has not been kind to William Lloyd Garrison. For decades he was marginalized as a shrill extremist who did his cause more harm than good, and who was ultimately made irrelevant by circumstance and changing political realities. Henry Mayer set out not only to tell Garrison's story, but to restore his place in American history. The importance of the abolition movement in creating the political context in which Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans operated has received more attention in recent decades, and therefore a reappraisal of the movement's most infamous leader was long overdue.

This excellent biography is extensively researched and impressively comprehensive in establishing the historical context of Garrison's life and work. While at times it might almost seem to double as a history of the abolitionist movement as seen through Garrison's life, the focus is always on Garrison. This can especially be seen in the final section of the book, when events and political circumstance largely passed him by and he became rather peripheral to the ongoing struggle for civil rights and the postwar order. The bulk of the book is taken up with his long career as an abolitionist agitator, and the reader will learn much of that struggle simply because Garrison and his life's work were inseparable. Recent scholarship has led to a reappraisal of the role the abolitionist movement played in creating the political context in which Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans operated. In the decades before the Civil War created the context in which slavery would be destroyed, the abolitionists struggled to change the political realities dictating how slavery would be dealt with. In order to understand Garrison's career and to appreciate his importance, it is necessary to appreciate that story. Too many histories have denigrated the Garrisonians as shrill extremists who hurt their own cause and were ultimately made irrelevant by the Civil War and the career of Lincoln. This book serves as a compelling corrective to that argument.

Mayer also makes it clear that for Garrison, abolitionism was always part of a larger struggle for true, inclusive democracy. This is why he argues that Garrison needs to be recognized as a key figure in the history of the American Civil Rights movement.

The wealth of detail never overwhelms the narrative, and Mayer never loses sight of Garrison the man even as the bulk of the book focuses on his life as an outspoken abolitionist--Garrison and his life's work were inseparable. The only aspect of Garrison's career as an abolitionist which could have used more attention is his shift to political pragmatist in the wake of the rise of the Radical Republicans. Mayer convincingly argues why Garrison did so, but very little attention is given to the process of how this happened. Given that this shift led to Garrison splitting with many former allies within the movement, it would have been helpful had Mayer devoted some space to tracing this intellectual and tactical shift. Given that Garrison had started his career as an outspoken and rather partisan Federalist before ultimately deciding to work outside of the American political system, it would have been interesting to consider how Garrison still maintained a rather keen political sense after so many decades of contempt for the party system.

But that is a relatively minor quibble with a book that sets out to accomplish so much and largely succeeds. Mayer set out to restore a marginalized figure to his rightful place in civil rights history. Highly recommended.

Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea

Joshua Horwitz and Casey Anderson. Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009.

A work of advocacy and political science rather than history, but the authors' analysis is deeply informed by a study of three periods of history as well as constitutional and legal history. Their basic contention is that there is an "Insurrectionist" ideology that uses a faulty reading of history, the Second Amemdment, and the Constitution to utilize the broader issue of gun rights to validate an extreme anti-democractic agenda.

The historical eras under consideration are the American Revolution, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Nazi state in Germany. In all three cases, the authors demonstrate that the Insurrectionist version of history is based on a superficial reading of events and a reliance on taking events and quotes out of context.

The authors make a compelling case, and while this book is primarily a work of contemporary political advocacy, it is also an excellent example of how historians and history educators can play a vital role in American society. The argument that a misreading of history is a crucial foundation for Insurrectionism should alert any historian or educator to the value of countering propaganda and misinformed conventional wisdom with informed, nuanced narratives that connect ordinary Americans to their past, and do so with a healthy respect for a wide spectrum of opinion and values.