The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It

Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. New York: Vintage Books, 1989, 1973, 1948

Hofstadter's book is justly regarded as a classic, and nearly 70 years after its initial publication it remains a compelling and readable interpretation of American political culture. The twelve chapters each focus on a particular figure, except for the first chapter on the Founders (which serves to establish the basis for the political culture which Hofstadter believes has a certain continuity through American history) and Chapter 7, "The Spoilsmen: An Age of Cynicism" which focuses on the politics of the Gilded Age (it culminates in a somewhat damning but not unsympathetic portrait of Grover Cleveland).

This edition is a 1989 reprint of the 1973 edition, which includes a forward by Christopher Lasch. In it, Lasch addresses the characterization of this book as an example of the "consensus" school of historiography to task, by pointing out that Hofstadter was no conservative; that he came to his conclusions from a left-wing perspective and that his understanding of the American political tradition of one of consensus was hardly without implied criticism or fault.

Indeed, it is hard to see how Hofstadter could have been understood as someone celebrating this aspect of American political culture (to the degree which one accepts that his conclusions are valid) given the degree to which his portraits pull these mostly venerated figures down to earth. Even the most sympathetic portrait--that of Lincoln--is moderated with a closing touch of tragedy; Lincoln's belief in the myth of the "self-made man", Hofstadter argues, ultimately let him down--the pressures of being President during a time of war, death, and sacrifice was too high a price for a man of such keen moral sensitivity. The prize he worked towards was a bitter one, and it would kill him.

Perhaps the arguments over whether Hofstadter is "really" a consensus historian are now dated; perhaps his book is now best approached as an important development in American historiography than as a vital interpretation. But perhaps not--Hofstadter's reader-friendly prose can still find audiences today, and surely there are many young readers who are hungry to dig beneath the cynical and tired hagiography surrounding so much of America's political history without succumbing to cheap radicalism and glib revisionism. There is criticism here, but also humanity--Hofstadter pulls these "great men" back down to Earth, but he doesn't thrown them down into the mud. By stripping away myth, he allows the actual people to stand before us. 

Freedom National

James Oakes. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. xxviii + 596 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, and index. $29.95.

In writing a history of Republican antislavery policies over the course of the Civil War, James Oakes has in some limited sense brought our understanding of the destruction of the instituation of slavery full circle. Early histories of the end of slavery lauded Lincoln as "the Great Emancipator" and focused on the Emancipation Proclamation coming as a providential stroke of liberation. And for many decades after, it was widely accepted that the Republican Party in general sought the end of slavery. But two very different counter-narratives undermined that former consensus. The "Lost Cause" mythology wanted to deny that the war was about slavery at all; and beginning a few decades ago, many historians came to question the sincerity of Republican anti-slavery. Republican efforts to destroy slavery were presumed to be convenient ideological excuses to justify economic imperialism over the agrarian South by the increasingly industrial North, or a belated--and thoroughly cynical--tactical move to ensure military victory.

This has all led to the wide dissemination of a seemingly 'balanced' conventional wisdom regarding the subject: Lincoln and the Republicans were forced into supporting emancipation almost against their will by circumstance; they wanted to fight a war purely to preserve national unity and only reluctantly shifted to a war to destroy slavery as military necessity dictated. And the Emancipation Proclamation was, depending on who you ask, either a radical break with previous policy which changed everything, or a transparently opportunistic propaganda ploy which changed nothing--i.e., 'it didn't free a single slave.'

Oakes deftly restores Lincoln and the Republicans to a central role in this saga, arguing that the supposed conflict between a war for Union versus one to end slavery simply didn't exist. The war was always fought to restore national unity, and slavery was always regarded as the cause of the rebellion. Republicans were united on those two key principles from the start.

Why, then, didn't Lincoln seek to destroy slavery immediately? There were several reasons. For one thing, his Constitutional scruples--shared by most Republicans--were genuine. But while subsequent generations have taken abolitionist rhetoric about the national government not interfering with slavery in states where it existed as evidence for satisfaction with the status quo, Oakes reconnects wartime arguments over wartime emancipation, state emancipation, and other partial measures within the context of what was by 1860 a well-developed abolitionist doctrine that by containing slavery inside a "cordon of freedom" it would eventually die. The point is repeatedly made that an admission that the Federal government could not overtly end slavery in a state was not incompatible with a belief that the government could and should do all it could to undermine the continued viability of slavery in the States which held on to it.

One of the recurring themes of the book is that the history of emancipation during the Civil War--of the long, bitter struggle to destroy slavery completely (a struggled which outlasted the war itself and Lincoln himself)--has been lost partly because we no longer acknowledge the context in which the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, was written in. Statements by Lincoln, such as the famous line in which he 'admits' that he would have, among other options, kept all slaves in bondage if it would have saved the Union, have been ripped from the specific political contexts in which he said them. Policy decisions and legislation which seem inconsistent and even hypocritical when viewed in isolation appear much different when restored to their place in the larger, coherent narrative that Oakes has crafted.

This is an important book, and a compelling one. Because he is explicitly countering a great weight of conventional wisdom and historical literature, Oakes builds his case slowly, which sometimes leads to repetition of incidents and examples which are sometimes repeated without acknowledgement that he is doing so--possibly a minor failure in editing or simply a rhetorical device that produces a couple of awkward 'double takes' on the reader's part. But that is a very minor complaint with an otherwise first-rate reclamation of a "lost history" of one of the most important developments in American history.