William Lee Miller. Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
One problem with the history of the Antebellum period is that it is defined--both in terminology and in the public mind--by what came next; yet at the same time, in the public mind the Civil War is not so much the end product of decades of deliberate agitation in a context of an increasingly stark sectional division as a sudden event that negated everything that came before.
Miller's book is an account of the long campaign for free speech fought in Congress by John Quincy Adams and eventually some allies. Specifically, for the right of anti-slavery petitions from citizens to be heard in the House of Representatives. This entirely parliamentary battle preceded not only the Civil War by more than two decades, it also came before the increasingly heated and open political arguments which came in the decade just prior to the war.
This particular battle--bloodless, sometimes carried out in obtuse parliamentary jargon, and ostensibly concerned with issues of free speech about slavery rather than slavery itself--has understandably failed to register in the public consciousness, However, Miller makes an excellent argument that the debate, and particularly John Quincy Adams leading role in it, deserves to be more widely known.
The battles to come would be more intense, more explicitly about slavery, and ultimately much more deadly. But this extended legislative battle was an important step along the way, and Miller deserves credit both for bringing it to life and making a mostly-forgotten parliamentary battle into a fairly gripping narrative.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Stumbling over Slavery on the way to the Yeoman's Republic
Roger G. Kennedy. Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
In the appendix to this thought-provoking study, Roger Kennedy mentions that his original plan for the book would have mandated a much longer work; as it is this study seems longer than it is. Or perhaps I should say "denser"; the book is not a chore to read. Kennedy is an entertaining stylist, and the story he is telling is compelling and rewards attention. But he is trying to tell a seemingly familiar tale (the Louisiana Purchase and its roles in the spread of slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century) through a novel interpretive approach. Namely, the leading role Jefferson played in opening the new land to slavery by precluding the possibility of multi-racial yeoman farming.
This is also an environmental history, as Kennedy returns again and again to the damage that plantation slavery agriculture inflicted on the landscape of the American South. This is somewhat ironic given Jefferson's well-documented interest in the theory that working the land developed virtue--thus, his oft-quoted belief that the nation would be best served by spreading as a nation of independent small farmers.
The chapters are broken up into many very short, very specific thematic sections; this allows the text to gain thematic depth and richness, but while Kennedy is an able wordsmith sometimes the narrative it a little hard for the general reader to discern; Kennedy assumes a level of basic knowledge that not every reader might possess.
It would be very difficult to summarize this book briefly; there is simply a lot here to mull over. The ways in which Jefferson and Madison tacitly utilized filibustering and other quasi-national adventuring to extend American sovereignty into former Spanish possessions are just one example of how Kennedy manages to alter the perspective of how the Louisiana Purchase came about. This is a book any student of the era would benefit from studying.
Highly recommended.
In the appendix to this thought-provoking study, Roger Kennedy mentions that his original plan for the book would have mandated a much longer work; as it is this study seems longer than it is. Or perhaps I should say "denser"; the book is not a chore to read. Kennedy is an entertaining stylist, and the story he is telling is compelling and rewards attention. But he is trying to tell a seemingly familiar tale (the Louisiana Purchase and its roles in the spread of slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century) through a novel interpretive approach. Namely, the leading role Jefferson played in opening the new land to slavery by precluding the possibility of multi-racial yeoman farming.
This is also an environmental history, as Kennedy returns again and again to the damage that plantation slavery agriculture inflicted on the landscape of the American South. This is somewhat ironic given Jefferson's well-documented interest in the theory that working the land developed virtue--thus, his oft-quoted belief that the nation would be best served by spreading as a nation of independent small farmers.
The chapters are broken up into many very short, very specific thematic sections; this allows the text to gain thematic depth and richness, but while Kennedy is an able wordsmith sometimes the narrative it a little hard for the general reader to discern; Kennedy assumes a level of basic knowledge that not every reader might possess.
It would be very difficult to summarize this book briefly; there is simply a lot here to mull over. The ways in which Jefferson and Madison tacitly utilized filibustering and other quasi-national adventuring to extend American sovereignty into former Spanish possessions are just one example of how Kennedy manages to alter the perspective of how the Louisiana Purchase came about. This is a book any student of the era would benefit from studying.
Highly recommended.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Manifest Destinies
Steven E. Woodworth. Manifest Destinies: America's Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
Steven E. Woodworth is a well-regarded historian who has written extensively on the Civil War. His background in military history is clear in this book, a history of the 1840s which devotes nearly half its length to a fairly detailed account of the Mexican-American War. Woodworth is at his best in this section; he is an able prose stylist and has a knack for summarizing tactical and strategic movements as well as humanizing his narrative with seemingly well-chosen observations, quotes, and anecdotes. Woodworth takes his subject seriously without being portentous or solemn.
The thesis of his book is that in 1840, the moral and ethical contradictions of a democratic republic that practiced slavery had been largely subsumed in the two-party system. Many major religious denominations had split along sectional lines over the slavery issue, but the two-party system managed to keep political tensions under control. By 1850, that fragile balance had been severely undermined. The acquisition of the North American continent west of the Louisiana Purchase, and the rapid peopling of California in the wake of the discovery of gold, forced policy makers and the public to confront the issue of the spread of slavery in new states and territories. The book ends with the Compromise of 1850, which rather put off the issue rather than truly settling it.
None of this is particularly controversial or new; Woodworth is writing for a general audience and he is certainly an able enough writer to be up to the task. But he doesn't have much new or insightful to add. His view of the Whig Party in general, as well as of Henry Clay, seems a bit dated. Dismissing the Whigs because of the admittedly superficial nature of their only two successful Presidential campaigns makes sense on the surface, but ignores that those elections took place in a context in which the voters were already well aware of Whig policies; the campaign rhetoric might indeed have been tawdry and content-free, but most voters and certainly most party regulars had more substantive reasons for their support. And it seems a bit unfair that Woodworth relies so strongly on Robert Remini's biography of Henry Clay yet uses it to support a much less flattering view of the man.
Another issue is his tendency to make too strong a parallel between events in the book and his interpretation of contemporary history and culture. It is one thing to find commonalities in American history over time and to find linkages between past and current events, but Woodworth's conservatism and religious convictions sometimes lead him to make sweeping pronouncements about what Americans as a whole believe, or do. There is nothing wrong with bringing one's own ideological beliefs into historical inquiry, but sometimes his eagerness to do so seems to cloud his judgement. His assertion that the gradualist abolitionists such as Lewis Tappan followed an approach which was "more practical and political than that of the Garrisonians" (47) seems to be a reaction to Garrison's break with mainstream evangelical Christians, who figure larger in Woodworth's narrative than they might deserve. He claims this is because Garrison was wrong and the moderates were right about the Constitution--that it was not, as he claimed, a fundamentally pro-slavery document, but rather that it was flawed but fundamentally anti-slavery. Woodworth does not elaborate on this assertion, which ignores the fact that it took two Amendments and the Civil War to get rid of slavery within the framework of that supposedly "anti-slavery" document.
This book isn't bad despite its flaws, and general readers eager for an implicitly conservative view of this period in American history which does not get as much attention from popular historians as it should will probably find much to like here. Readers who know the era better--who have a more nuanced understanding of the Whig Party, or the Panic of 1837--won't get much out of it. I would be interested in reading some of his works on the Civil War; I suspect he knows the literature and his primary sources better, and as noted above he seems an able military historian.
Steven E. Woodworth is a well-regarded historian who has written extensively on the Civil War. His background in military history is clear in this book, a history of the 1840s which devotes nearly half its length to a fairly detailed account of the Mexican-American War. Woodworth is at his best in this section; he is an able prose stylist and has a knack for summarizing tactical and strategic movements as well as humanizing his narrative with seemingly well-chosen observations, quotes, and anecdotes. Woodworth takes his subject seriously without being portentous or solemn.
The thesis of his book is that in 1840, the moral and ethical contradictions of a democratic republic that practiced slavery had been largely subsumed in the two-party system. Many major religious denominations had split along sectional lines over the slavery issue, but the two-party system managed to keep political tensions under control. By 1850, that fragile balance had been severely undermined. The acquisition of the North American continent west of the Louisiana Purchase, and the rapid peopling of California in the wake of the discovery of gold, forced policy makers and the public to confront the issue of the spread of slavery in new states and territories. The book ends with the Compromise of 1850, which rather put off the issue rather than truly settling it.
None of this is particularly controversial or new; Woodworth is writing for a general audience and he is certainly an able enough writer to be up to the task. But he doesn't have much new or insightful to add. His view of the Whig Party in general, as well as of Henry Clay, seems a bit dated. Dismissing the Whigs because of the admittedly superficial nature of their only two successful Presidential campaigns makes sense on the surface, but ignores that those elections took place in a context in which the voters were already well aware of Whig policies; the campaign rhetoric might indeed have been tawdry and content-free, but most voters and certainly most party regulars had more substantive reasons for their support. And it seems a bit unfair that Woodworth relies so strongly on Robert Remini's biography of Henry Clay yet uses it to support a much less flattering view of the man.
Another issue is his tendency to make too strong a parallel between events in the book and his interpretation of contemporary history and culture. It is one thing to find commonalities in American history over time and to find linkages between past and current events, but Woodworth's conservatism and religious convictions sometimes lead him to make sweeping pronouncements about what Americans as a whole believe, or do. There is nothing wrong with bringing one's own ideological beliefs into historical inquiry, but sometimes his eagerness to do so seems to cloud his judgement. His assertion that the gradualist abolitionists such as Lewis Tappan followed an approach which was "more practical and political than that of the Garrisonians" (47) seems to be a reaction to Garrison's break with mainstream evangelical Christians, who figure larger in Woodworth's narrative than they might deserve. He claims this is because Garrison was wrong and the moderates were right about the Constitution--that it was not, as he claimed, a fundamentally pro-slavery document, but rather that it was flawed but fundamentally anti-slavery. Woodworth does not elaborate on this assertion, which ignores the fact that it took two Amendments and the Civil War to get rid of slavery within the framework of that supposedly "anti-slavery" document.
This book isn't bad despite its flaws, and general readers eager for an implicitly conservative view of this period in American history which does not get as much attention from popular historians as it should will probably find much to like here. Readers who know the era better--who have a more nuanced understanding of the Whig Party, or the Panic of 1837--won't get much out of it. I would be interested in reading some of his works on the Civil War; I suspect he knows the literature and his primary sources better, and as noted above he seems an able military historian.
Monday, November 18, 2013
The View from the West
Earl J. Hess. The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from The Appalachians to The Mississippi. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
A straightforward work of military history which is arranged chronologically, The Civil War in the West makes a case that the war was actually decided in the West, and that western armies deserve a great deal more credit for defeating the Confederacy than is generally given in mainstream acocunts which center their attention on the Eastern theater. The book is generally told from the Union point of view.
The problems of controlling--to one degree or another--vast expanses of conquered Confederate territory is a recurring theme. So is the logistic difficulties experienced by Union forces as they penetrated deeper into the Confederacy, often connected to sources of supplies and ordnance only by rivers and wagon trails of dubious quality. Western armies and their commanders often found themselves forced to fulfill many civic functions in occupied areas, especially when local government officials were either Confederates or of questionable loyalty. And with the acquisition of more Southern territory came contact with more slaves; the question of what to do with them would evolve with time, circumstance, changing policy, and the decisions and attitudes of different commanders.
Western warfare was generally fought at a smaller scale than the famous battles of the East, but were as fiercely fought. Western armies on both sides were generally less disciplined in terms of dress, demeaner, and tendency to plunder (Confederate forces were seemingly about as likely to exploit Southern farms as the dreaded Yankees) than their Eastern counterparts. Another contrast lies in generalship--in the West, the Union held the advantage from the beginning, unlike in the East, and with sporadic exceptions and setbacks the war in the west was marked by a steady succession of Union success. Hess notes that some generals who were successful in the West then failed in the East (Halleck, Pope, etc.), but follows that observation up noting that Lincoln would finally again give command of Eastern forces to a general who had been fighting in the "Western style". (317) That general was Grant, and in collaboration with the much more provincially Western Sherman, Grant applied lessons and tactics learned in the West to the Eastern theater, with decisive results.
A very readable and well-argued addition to Civil War literature.
A straightforward work of military history which is arranged chronologically, The Civil War in the West makes a case that the war was actually decided in the West, and that western armies deserve a great deal more credit for defeating the Confederacy than is generally given in mainstream acocunts which center their attention on the Eastern theater. The book is generally told from the Union point of view.
The problems of controlling--to one degree or another--vast expanses of conquered Confederate territory is a recurring theme. So is the logistic difficulties experienced by Union forces as they penetrated deeper into the Confederacy, often connected to sources of supplies and ordnance only by rivers and wagon trails of dubious quality. Western armies and their commanders often found themselves forced to fulfill many civic functions in occupied areas, especially when local government officials were either Confederates or of questionable loyalty. And with the acquisition of more Southern territory came contact with more slaves; the question of what to do with them would evolve with time, circumstance, changing policy, and the decisions and attitudes of different commanders.
Western warfare was generally fought at a smaller scale than the famous battles of the East, but were as fiercely fought. Western armies on both sides were generally less disciplined in terms of dress, demeaner, and tendency to plunder (Confederate forces were seemingly about as likely to exploit Southern farms as the dreaded Yankees) than their Eastern counterparts. Another contrast lies in generalship--in the West, the Union held the advantage from the beginning, unlike in the East, and with sporadic exceptions and setbacks the war in the west was marked by a steady succession of Union success. Hess notes that some generals who were successful in the West then failed in the East (Halleck, Pope, etc.), but follows that observation up noting that Lincoln would finally again give command of Eastern forces to a general who had been fighting in the "Western style". (317) That general was Grant, and in collaboration with the much more provincially Western Sherman, Grant applied lessons and tactics learned in the West to the Eastern theater, with decisive results.
A very readable and well-argued addition to Civil War literature.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Ecstatic Nation
Brenda Wineapple. Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877. New York: Harper Collins, 2013.
Wineapple's book is centered on 'ecstasy' but it begins in apprehension and ends in exhaustion. The United States of America she portrays is wracked throughout this period by extremes of ecstasy triggered by a tendency to appeal to a 'higher law' whether the subject is transcendence, religious revival, territorial expansion, or--and especially--slavery. When the book begins, in 1848, the debate over slavery had become so heated and so grounded in moral absolutes and righteous certainties that sectional conflict seemed inevitable. When the book closes in 1877, the nation's white majority are united in weariness and a desire to put the ecstatic energies of abolitionism, civil war, and a faltering civil rights movement behind them.
The narrative is framed by two funerals, each of which brought the different sections of the nation together although in very different ways. The first, in 1848, was for John Quincy Adams, and the outpouring of respect for the divisive old foe of the Slave Power and its corrosive effect on the Union could not mask the lingering fear that his dire warnings could not be ignored even after he left the stage. The second, in 1877, was for for former US Senator Charles Sumner, one of the great Congressional abolitionists of the "ecstatic era" the country was coming out of. His eulogy, by former Confederate politician-turned US Senator from Mississippi Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, implicitly called for an end of the political and social divisions that forced whites in both the North and South to acknowledge that the African Americans the Civil War had helped to free were still around, making claims to citizenship and a place in the American polity and American society. But white America was tired, and wanted to believe that this work was done. The answer to that disconnect was burying an ongoing conflict in nostalgia-toned revisionism and acceding to a new racial hierarchy which would ultimately reframe the Civil War as an unfortunate tragedy and Reconstruction as an unmitigated disaster.
Wineapple is a Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, and the book is deeply informed by the literary culture of the era. This is, in many ways, a study of the culture--the zeitgeist--of a tumultuous era that came to a close when the white elite, and much of the electorate, decided that more than enough blood and treasure had been expended on "the negro question" and the values of compromise and conciliation were lauded as fundamental to rebuilding the newly unified nation. American Indians were also victims of this new, determined quest for "order" and peace, even at the expense of justice. The America of the final chapters of Wineapple's book, more than anything, wanted strife and conflict off the front pages of their newspapers. It was time to solidify the economy behind the gold standard and clean up the civil service. A continent was unified, cleansed of both slavery and indigenous people (reservations were just as invisible as the disenfranchised freeman of the South). Further triumphs in the advancement of democracy, further expansions of suffrage, would have to wait for future generations.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, August 23, 2013
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.
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.
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