The Road to the Road to Gettysburg: 10 Favorite Books On the Period Leading Up To the Civil War

When Brett Schulte approached me to participate in his “10 Best Gettysburg Books” project, I told him that I’d be delighted to do so – except for the fact that I haven’t read 10 Gettysburg books. In a shameless attempt to get a piece of the action, I’m therefore contributing in my own way, by supplying a list of my favorite books dealing with the period leading up to the Civil War – let’s call it “The Road to the Road to Gettysburg”.

In order to accommodate different types of readers and interests, I’ve included a variety of books. Some are broad in their geographic and temporal scope, while others focus on particular events (e.g., the Nullification Crisis) or issues (e.g., Free Soil). In many instances I have tried to mention alternatives or follow-up suggestions for those so inclined. There are books here both for true beginners – those students of the Civil War who have never delved into the fascinating pre-War world – and a few that even those with more experience may not have encountered.

All of the usual caveats apply, plus some others. This is not a list of the "best" or "most important" books. I carefully selected the adjective "favorite" to make this clear. I am not a professional historian, simply a reader who has become drawn to American history of this period. I read what interests me, and some things interest me more than others. For this reason, and because my interest in American history came late (fewer than ten years ago), there are large gaps in my knowledge that necessarily affect my selections. And my reactions to the books I have read are of course personal. Where I have selected one book on a topic rather than others that might be regarded as leading candidates, I have tried to explain why. If I have missed a favorite, I encourage you to take me to task (gently!) and add your suggestions in the comments. I may or may not have a good excuse.

A. Introduction and Prequel

1. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press 2007).

This first selection is in the nature of a prequel or introduction. Daniel Walker Howe’s book, covering the period from the end of the War of 1812 through the Mexican War, is not a “coming of the Civil War” book. It is, however, the finest general survey of the era that I know of. If you want to orient yourself and understand the events, personalities and trends of the period leading into the immediate pre-War era, there is no better place to start. Jill Lepore has a penetrating review of What Hath God Wrought in the New Yorker, Vast Designs: How America Came of Age, that will whet your appetite by giving you a feel for the book’s virtues.

Prof. Howe’s principal competition is probably Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton & Co. 2005). As the title suggests, Prof. Wilentz covers more ground than Prof. Howe does – ground that is unnecessary for present purposes, since the period 1848-1861 happens to be covered by one of the finest American history books ever written.

If you are thinking about exploring the period, but not at treatise length (Wilentz’s book contains almost 800 pages of text, Howe’s in excess of 850), Harry L. Watson’s Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (Hill & Wang 2006, originally published 1990) (roughly 270 pages of text) is an outstanding alternative. Watson focuses primarily on the period through the end of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, but his ability to impart his knowledge of and feel for the period and the Second Party System are superb. Somehow, you manage to get 75% or more of Howe in less than one-third of the pages.

One other way to explore this period, for those so inclined, is via biography. Robert V. Remini is probably the leading authority on Andrew Jackson. I haven’t read his three-volume magnum opus on Old Hickory, but the single volume condensation, The Life of Andrew Jackson, is quite good, and his biography of Jackson’s arch-enemy and Abraham Lincoln’s idol, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union is even better.

B. Overviews of the Pre-War Period

2. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (Harper Perennial 1977) (first published 1976)

If you read only one book about the period leading up to the Civil War, David M. Potter’s magnificent The Impending Crisis is the book you should get. More than thirty years after it first appeared, it continues to stand head and shoulders above all competition. This is not a close call, people.

For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Professor Potter (1910-1971), together with Kenneth M. Stampp, was one of America’s finest historians to come of age around the mid-20th Century, and The Impending Crisis is his masterpiece. First published in 1976, after Professor Potter’s death, it is the culmination of a lifetime of study and research. Beautifully written and highly readable, it is both comprehensive and passionately argued. If you read this single book with care, you will be richly rewarded with a nuanced understanding of the political events of the antebellum period and the arguments about Civil War causation.

It is rare, in my experience, that a work so completely dominates its field. Take advantage of the opportunity.

3. Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (W.W. Norton & Co. 1983) (first published 1978)

After – but only after – you have read and absorbed Prof. Potter’s masterpiece, you might consider Michael Holt’s Political Crisis of the 1850s for a somewhat different view. Prof. Holt is an intensely political historian: elections, and the officials elected, matter.

Prof. Holt’s most valuable contribution is his focus on the fact that the mid-south, unlike the cotton south, did not immediately secede in response to Lincoln’s election but only after Sumter. Any theory of Civil War causation, he maintains, must account for this phenomenon – and slavery density alone is not an adequate explanation. In a brilliant piece of detective work, Prof. Holt identifies the continued presence of a viable two-party system as a potentially key piece of the puzzle. By the mid-1850s, Democratic parties dominated all of the lower south states, while vigorous Whiggish opposition persisted in the mid-south, providing a political base around which opponents of secession could rally when the crisis came.

4a. William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (Oxford University Press 1991) (first published 1990)

4b. William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861 (Oxford University Press 2008) (first published 2007)

It is impossible to compile this list and not include William W. Freehling’s obsessive, often fascinating and quirky Road to Disunion series. As Professor Freehling relates in the preface to the first volume, he initially expected that a book about the causes of secession would cover the late 1850s. His research took him further and further back in time until he wound up in the American Revolution.

I should disclose up front that Professor Freehling is not a great writer. All I can say is that, if you can get past his idiosyncratic prose (and you even come to savor it after a while), you will benefit from the insights of a man who has been obsessively (that word keeps coming to mind) studying and cataloging the antebellum south for virtually his entire adult life. The volumes move chronologically, but they also repeatedly stop to survey the terrain. Entire chapters can be, in effect, discrete essays – about the southern transportation system, or southern literature, or the intellectual arguments that were constructed to transform slavery from a “necessary evil” into a positive good.

Prof. Freehling's greatest contribution lies in his ability to highlight and explain the profound differences that existed among antebellum southerners, and in fact that theme structures the volumes. How did it happen that secessionists, repeatedly defeated and rejected by their fellow southerners for decades, finally triumphed and were able to lead their previously-unwilling cohorts out of the union? In Prof. Freehling's words (which will give you a taste of that prose style):

Secessionists are the desperadoes in the Old South's story. . . . Between Calhoun's unconditional desire to perpetuate slavery and Jefferson's conditional hope to end the institution, so many Southerners fought for so many visions that secessionists lost and lost and lost, losing finally all confidence in winning. After Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, this minority of the southern minority conspired to bring off a last gamble. In 1861, to extremists' amazement, disunion triumphed. This is the tale of how and why vanquished secessionists became victors -- and of a south which remained too divided for the victors to win their gamble with the sword.

C. Particular Events and Issues

5a. William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina: 1816-1836 (Oxford University Press 1965)

5b. Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights and the Nullification Crisis (Oxford University Press 1989) (first published 1987)

When it comes to the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833, we are blessed with an embarrassment of riches – and the two books listed above complement each other beautifully. Professor Freehling’s book (which is much better written than his later Road to Disunion series) focuses primarily on the situation within South Carolina – how did it come to be that the inmates took charge of the asylum? He tells a gripping story and argues with some persuasiveness that South Carolinian leaders viewed resistance to the tariff as a preemptive strike against future threats to slavery.

Richard Ellis’s book, on the other hand, focuses on the reactions of Andrew Jackson and other national leaders, and then examines the effects of the president’s aggressive rhetoric and posture on the Democratic coalition. Presaging the reaction of mid-south states before the Civil War, many southern Democrats both adamantly denounced South Carolina’s position and yet were repelled by Jackson’s consolidationist and anti-state’s rights rhetoric and his willingness to “coerce” South Carolina if necessary.

6. John C. Waugh, On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History (SR Books 2003)

I do not think that the definitive book on the Crisis and Compromise of 1850 has been written yet.

Many would disagree. Holman Hamilton’s Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (University Press of Kentucky 2005) (originally published 1964) is usually cited as superb. The paperback version of Hamilton’s book contains a forward by Michael Holt to that effect, and Prof. Holt’s opinion is not to be taken lightly. Since I am apparently the only person who has not been swept off his feet, take my alternate recommendation with many grains of salt.

John Waugh’s book may lack some of Hamilton’s detailed analysis – Waugh is a journalist by trade, not an historian – but it is a tremendous amount of fun. Mr. Waugh grippingly relates the inherently dramatic story, provides vivid portraits of the many famous figures who participated in the drama – Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, among others – and supplies arresting and often hilarious stories and vignettes (some of which are related here and here). It is true, as I mentioned in an earlier post discussing the book, that Mr. Waugh does not do justice to the end of the crisis, the period after the collapse of the Clay omnibus plan at the end of July. But that is the also a weakness (in my humble opinion) of Prof. Hamilton’s book, so I don’t think you’re losing anything.

For those particularly interested in the Crisis and Compromise of 1850, one other book deserves mention as a supplement. Mark J. Stegmaier’s Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis (Kent State University Press 1996) focuses, as the title suggests, on the role played in the Crisis by the looming border dispute between the State of Texas and the newly-acquired unincorporated territory of New Mexico. The book is therefore a valuable corrective to most accounts, which typically underplay what I see as the most potentially dangerous issue: the possibility that a clash along that border might have precipitated a wider conflict. It also highlights the critical role played by one of our greatest presidents, Millard Fillmore, in resolving the crisis.

7. Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854 (University of North Carolina Press 2004)

The spread of the anti-slavery-expansion impulse in the North is generally conceived of as largely an outgrowth of Whiggish, moral objections to the peculiar institution – Abraham Lincoln being the paradigm. But this perspective is ultimately unsatisfying, for it leaves a mystery: loyal, hard-money Jacksonian Democrats such as David Wilmot, who seem to have had few moral qualms about slavery if confined to the South, precipitated the anti-slavery-expansion crisis in 1846, and large numbers of Democrats (including Martin Van Buren, the architect of the Democrat Party) thereafter joined that movement. Who on earth were these people, where did they come from, and what motivated them?

Jonathan Earle’s Jacksonian Antislavery is the only book I know of that explores these and similar issues, and does so to fascinating effect. Prof. Earle convincingly shows how resistance to the Slave Power and slavery expansion were, in many ways, natural outgrowths of radical Democratic values such as fear and hatred of perceived monopoly and “aristocracy” and devotion to the continued availability of “free soil” (both cost-free and slave-free) for settlement and farming. Abolitionism was always a fringe movement. Free Soilism transformed the North. If you want to begin to understand why masses of Democrats ultimately deserted to the Republicans (and by inference why they were absolutely critical to the Republican coalition), this is the book to consult.

For an earlier discussion and review of Prof. Earle’s book, see here. A runner up in this category is Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, although it has a very different focus.

8. Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (W.W. Norton & Co. 1978)

For the more adventurous among you, Gavin Wright’s book remains, more than 30 years after its publication, the single best work on economic issues relating to the antebellum south, slavery, farming, cotton and secession. If you are not an economist, as I am not, you may skim over portions of the book and miss some of Professor Wright’s subtler points, as I certainly did. Even so, an attentive lay reader will encounter a host of brilliant insights. Prof. Wright’s development of the idea that slavery was a method of capital accumulation and not simply a method of labor organization, and the consequences flowing from that insight, are worth the price of the book alone.

Those concerned about impersonal, economic explanations for historical events should fear not: Prof. Wright goes out of his way to make clear that he is not an economic determinist who believes that economics alone dictate events. At the same time, his penetrating analysis points out economic phenomena that help explain southern society and southern reactions to perceived northern threats against slavery.

For earlier discussions of aspects of Prof. Wright’s book, see here, here, here and here.

9. Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (Oxford University Press 1992) (first published 1990)

I mentioned earlier that Kenneth M. Stampp was, together with David M. Potter, one of America’s finest mid 20th Century historians. America in 1857 focuses, as the title suggests, on that pivotal year and the dramatic events it encompassed – from the inauguration of James Buchanan and the issuance of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dred Scott days later, to the short but sharp Panic of 1857. But the core of the book is an outstanding discussion of the situation in Kansas and President Buchanan’s disastrous decision to betray his own emissary, James Walker, and support the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. To make this story comprehensible, Prof. Stampp ventures back to provide a superb summary of the tremendously confusing earlier events in and concerning Kansas (where there seem to have been elections held every other week), and he takes us through the conclusion in the following year, when the Democratic anti-Lecompton forces spearheaded by Stephen A. Douglas administered a devastating defeat to their own party’s president.

I particularly like Professor Stampp’s book because it also tacitly provides a well-argued counterpoint to the contention that all historical events are utterly contingent. Prof. Stampp is no determinist, but he points out convincingly that, with the passage of time, certain outcomes became more likely. The Civil War was not inevitable in mid-1858, but many doors had closed in the previous eighteen months. In a real sense, the nation was materially closer to the “brink” than it had been.

D. The Secession Winter

10a. Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession (University of North Carolina Press 2008)

10b. Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists In The Secessionist Crisis (University of North Carolina Press 1993) (first published 1989)

10c. Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (University Press of Virginia 2001)

Although this may appear to be a transparent attempt to shoehorn extra books into list that is supposed to be limited to 10 – and it is – my linkage of these volumes is actually not all that unreasonable. All three examine the same period – the Secession Winter from Lincoln’s election through Sumter – but from different perspectives: the North, the mid-South, and the deep South. Reading them together provides an excellent opportunity to watch as the sections maneuver for position and thus to discern their concerns and motivations.

Partisans tend to label President Lincoln as a rabid warmonger intent on starting war to subjugate the South, or paint him as a rosy-hued semi-pacifist who did everything he could to avoid armed conflict.

Russell McClintock’s book absolves the president of both charges. A meticulous and extremely well documented study of Northern reaction and response during the Secession Winter (and Spring) of 1860-61, it is a worthy successor to Kenneth Stampp’s And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 (Louisiana State University Press 2006) (first published 1950). I reviewed Dr. McClintock’s work in an earlier post, which I invite you to read. If you want to take a look at the facts before you reach your conclusions on Lincoln, this book is an excellent place to start.

As students of the Civil War know, the slave states did not secede en masse before President Lincoln’s inauguration. While the seven Cotton South states did so, the mid- and upper-south states resisted. As I mentioned previously, Michael Holt has argued that no theory about the causation of secession and the Civil War is worth its salt that does not explain this obvious but usually ignored discrepancy. In his superb book, Daniel Crofts takes Prof. Holt up on his challenge by conducting an in-depth analysis of the “reluctant Confederates” who resisted secession in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina between November 1860 and the Spring of 1861.

What Prof. Crofts finds is that the interplay among a number of factors seems to account for the difference. The degree of enslavement was clearly important, but that alone does not explain the massive resistance that developed in the mid-south to the secession tidal wave that swept the lower south away. A vigorous two-party system (which had largely disappeared from the Cotton South but persisted in the mid-south), geographical patterns of political affiliations and their interactions with high-density slave ownership regions contributed significantly to the positions adopted by these states.

Along the way, Prof. Crofts does an admirable job of making understandable a host of phenomena that are difficult for us to absorb today. Among other things, what was “conditional unionism”? Why or how could people simultaneously proclaim devotion to the Union, and abhor and denounce secession as disastrous lunacy, yet insist that only the carrot, and not the stick, be used to persuade the lunatics to return – and then themselves secede when the stick was applied? Prof. Crofts also provides the most comprehensible review I have seen of the myriad proposals, conferences and plans that were proposed and floated during the period.

Charles B. Dew’s slim volume is not a precise counterpart to the studies of Prof. Crofts and Dr. McClintock, but it is a fitting way to end this list. During the Secession Winter, five deep south states sent commissioners to other slave states in an attempt to persuade them to secede. Prof. Dew’s work examines the messages that the commissioners brought and demonstrates that slavery and race were at their heart. Anyone who contends otherwise must grapple with this powerful and persuasive study and refute it. To the best of my knowledge, no one has.

E. Postscript and Conclusion

Readers may have noticed that, for a “pre-Civil War” list, mine is light on books that focus specifically on secession in the lower south – Prof. Dew’s book is probably the only one that can be so classified.

Unfortunately, the finest books that I have read on secession in the lower south – and they are superb – are single-state studies that I deemed a bit too specialized for this list. That said, I cannot bear to omit them altogether. I have previously discussed three of them in an earlier joint review, which I invite you to read: J. Mills Thorton’s Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860, Lacy K. Ford’s Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry 1800-1860, and Stephanie McCurry’s Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, & the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country. Having re-read all three since composing that review, my respect for them has only grown.

As I said at the outset, this is one lay person’s idiosyncratic "favorite" list. I welcome your thoughts and additions. Don’t hesitate. As any blogger will tell you, comments – including constructive criticism – are always welcome. Conversely, if you are looking for leads on particular issues or events that I have not addressed, I would be pleased to provide suggestions if I have them.

The Mockingbird Dances

At least I think it's a mockingbird. But it was dancing. Click to enlarge.

Calhoun on the Mexican War: "We are made to dig our own grave"

Merrill Peterson describes John Calhoun's concerns about the Mexican War as of December 1846, when Congress reconvened:

Calhoun returned to Congress determined to bring the war to a rapid close. Making war was inevitably centralizing; the revenue to finance it must upset the finances of the country and, after the struggle to reform the tariff, force it upward again; above all, by raising the specter of new slave territory, the war inflamed abolitionist feelings in the North and turned all parties against the South. "They are willing that our blood and treasure shall be expended freely in the war to acquire territory, not for the common good, but as a means of assailing and ruining us. We are made to dig our own grave," Calhoun wrote gloomily.

"Mexico is to us the forbidden fruit"

On May 15, 1846, three days after the Senate effectively authorized war against Mexico over his objection, John C. Calhoun wrote to fellow South Carolinian Henry W. Conner a letter in which he apparently alluded to the underlying source of his concern. "Mexico," Calhoun warned, "is to us the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it [is] to subject our institutions to political death."

Three months later, David Wilmot introduced his famous proviso.

John Calhoun on the War Against Mexico: "It is monstrous"

Having devoted several posts to John C. Calhoun’s Pakenham Letter, I’d like to turn to an event in Calhoun’s career several years later. It’s one that I’ve always found somewhat odd and jarring in light of Calhoun’s earlier advocacy of Texas annexation.

On Monday May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk delivered to Congress a Message concerning relations with Mexico. To make a long story short, Polk reported that the Mexican government had in March refused to receive John Slidell, whom Polk had sent there (so Polk asserted) to seek peace. Then, on April 24, 1846, Mexican troops had attacked American troops on the north side of the Rio Grande, resulting in “some sixteen” American casualties, and others “appear to have been surrounded and captured.”

“[W]ar exists,” the president asserted. And with “[w]ar actually existing,” he called on Congress “to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace.”

What I find both jarring and fascinating is that John Calhoun opposed Polk’s rush to war. At the very outset of the debate in the Senate, he resisted a call to print 20,000 copies of the president’s message and accompanying documents because they would be distributed as pro-war propaganda and implied endorsement of a decision that had not yet been reached. Calhoun emphasized the moral and constitutional gravity of the issue that the Senate was being asked to consider:

Mr. CALHOUN . . . The question now submitted to us is one of the gravest character, and the importance of the consequences which may result from it we cannot now determine. I do hope that this body will give to it that high, full, and dispassionate consideration which is worthy the character of the body and the high constitutional functions which it is called on to exercise. I trust that we will weigh everything calmly and deliberately, and do all that the Constitution, interests, and honor of the country may require. . . .

A little later that day, Calhoun fleshed out his position somewhat more fully. He objected to the president’s suggestions that “war” already existed. Armed conflict, or invasion, may or may not exist. But under the Constitution “war” can exist only when the Congress so declares.

Mr. CALHOUN. . . . [T]he President has announced that there is war; but according to my interpretation, there is no war according to the sense of our Constitution. I distinguish between hostilities and war, and God forbid that, acting under the Constitution, we should ever confound one with the other. There may be invasion without war, and the President is authorized to repel invasion without war. But it is our sacred duty to make war, and it is for us to determine whether war shall be declared or not. If we have declared war, a state of war exists, and not till then.

It was in this aspect of the question that I regarded it as one of great magnitude, and deprecated any precipitate action on the part of the Senate. There is a certain forbearance, dignity, and calmness, which will make war not the less effective if it should be our fate to be involved in war.

The last few sentences of Calhoun’s short statement are remarkable for their expression of patriotism. Notice the reference to the country as a whole as “my country”:

I hope that I shall never indicate, on my part, the earnestness with which I go into any measure by a precipitate course of action. I am prepared to do all that the Constitution, and patriotism, and the honor of my country, may require. But I wish time to consider on all points, and desire that our whole action may be marked by dignity.

Notwithstanding Calhoun’s position, within twenty four hours the Senate was finalizing a bill authorizing the raising of troops and supplies. Most troubling in Calhoun’s view, as he expressed it on May 12, 1846, was the fact that the bill recognized war as already existing. The proposed legislation was entitled “An act providing for the prosecution of the existing war . . .” and the introduction to the act repeated that characterization:

Whereas, by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States:

Be it enacted . . ., That, for the purpose of enabling the Government of the United States to prosecute said war to a speedy and successful termination . . ..

Calhoun rose to repeat his objections. Whether it acknowledged it or not, the Congress was declaring war (the Globe reporter reports this and Calhoun’s later statements in the third person, past tense [e.g., “Mr. Calhoun said that . . .”]; I have transposed these to the first person present in the hope that you will read them aloud):

Mr. CALHOUN . . . I hope, at least, one day will be allowed to those who are to vote upon this bill, as an opportunity to consult the documents which have been submitted to the Senate by the Executive, as containing the ground on which the bill is to pass. It is a bill amounting to a declaration of war. I have no objection whatever to voting the amount of supplies contained in the bill, or even a greater amount; but I am at present unprepared to vote anything which amounts to a declaration of war. The question is one of great magnitude, and gentlemen who entertain doubts respecting the facts on which the bill is founded, or in regard to the necessity or propriety of a declaration of war, should certainly have some short time allowed them for reflection. . .

Other senators complained that the troops needed immediate help. Calhoun’s request would result in fatal delay. What game was he really playing? In response, Calhoun denied the charge. The troops could be supplied and reinforced immediately; it was only the preamble to which he objected. And he had no covert agenda; he was simply not prepared to vote on the gravest constitutional responsibility he held as a senator:

Mr. CALHOUN . . . I seek no delay, and resort to no indirect course to conceal my true intent. . . . [W]hy can you not accommodate gentlemen who have honest doubts as to the state of facts, by consenting to strike out the preamble of the bill, and to suffer the question of supplies to be separated from the question of a declaration of war? Is not such a course reasonable? Is it not fair and just? Gentlemen stated to the Senate that the information received from the frontier was such as to require instant action; if so, they can have instant action. If any delay occurs, the delay is their own. I will create none.

I am prepared to vote the supplies on the spot, and without an hour’s delay; but it is just as impossible for me to vote for that preamble as it is for me to plunge a dagger into my own heart, and more so. I cannot; I am not prepared to affirm that war exists between the United States and Mexico, and that it exists by the act of that Government. How can I affirm this, when I have no evidence on which to affirm it? How do I know that the Government of Mexico will not disavow what had been done? Am I to be called upon to give a vote like this? It is impossible for me to utter it, consistently with that sacred regard for truth in which I have had been educated.

The Senate, Calhoun charged, was proposing to “make war on the Constitution.” It was “monstrous”:

I have no difficulty as to my course. My mind is made up; it is made up unalterably; I can neither vote affirmatively nor negatively. I have no certain evidence to go on. Whether any one will go with me in this course I do not know; I have made no inquiries, and I do not know that a single friend will be found at my side. As to what might be said of such a course, and all that is called popularity, I do not care the snap of my finger. If I cannot stand and brave so small a danger, I should be but little worthy of what small amount of reputation I may have earned.

I cannot agree to make war on Mexico by making war on the Constitution; and the Senate will make war on the Constitution by declaring war to exist between the two Governments when no war has been declared, and nothing has occurred but a slight military conflict between a portion of two armies. Yet I am asked to affirm, in the very face of the Constitution, that a local rencontre, not authorized by the act of either Government, constituted a state of war between the Government of Mexico and the Government of the United States – to say that, by a certain military movement of General [Zachary] Taylor and General [Mariano] Arista, every citizen of the United States is made the enemy of every man in Mexico.

It is monstrous. It strips Congress of the power of making war; and what is more and worse, it gives that power to every officer, nay, to every subaltern commanding a corporal’s guard. Do you gentlemen call on me to do this? Do you expect that I would vote for a position so monstrous? If you force the question upon me, I will take my own course. If you want unanimity, you can have it; but if you choose to proceed on your own petty party views, be it so.

Later that day, Calhoun made his final protest. Substantively, it added little, but I invite you to picture the Cast Iron Man standing in the Senate and making this plea:

Why, in the name of all that is reasonable, would you rush at once to the ultimate resort? Suppose this turns out to be a case in which war ought to be declared, after examination of all the documents: let the declaration be made in due form and with becoming dignity – not in this side-way, as if you were afraid to do it. Show a front to the world, such as becomes the character of the nation.

In the present condition of the world, war is a tremendous thing. The whole sentiment of the civilized world is turning stronger and stronger against war. Let us not, for the honor of our country – for the dignity of the Republic – be the first to create a state of war. Mortal man cannot see the end of it. When I look on and see that we are rushing upon the most tremendous event, I am amazed. I am more than amazed; I am in a state of wonder and deep alarm. This is not the tone of character to go into war. They who go into war in this manner – as if seeking a divisive course – cannot expect to succeed. It is a hasty, thoughtless course.

I do not wish to use any words in an offensive sense -- but with all possible emphasis, I exhort you to avoid even the appearance of precipitancy, or want of that deep reflection and profound meditation which alone can guide you to a successful issue.

Shortly before 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday May 12, 1846, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 40-2, the only two dissenters being Senators Thomas Clayton (Whig, Delaware) and John Davis (Whig, Massachusetts). Two the votes recorded in favor of the bill were partial or conditional. “When Mr. [John J.] CRITTENDEN’S [Whig, Kentucky] name was called, he voted ‘ay, except the preamble.’ So also did Mr. [William] UPHAM [Whig, Vermont].”

“Senators [John M.] BERRIEN [Whig, Georgia], CALHOUN, and [George] EVANS [Whig, Maine], being in their seats, did not vote.”

John Calhoun's Pakenham Letter: What Did Calhoun Know?

A postscript to my previous post about John C. Calhoun’s Pakenham Letter.

As you have seen, one issue underlying any analysis of Calhoun’s actions is whether the annexation treaty had any realistic chance of passage in the first place. If passage were likely, then Calhoun’s decision to write the letter looks more like an attempt to unite the south, consequences be damned. If on the other hand, passage was not in the cards in the first place, well then the letter might be seen as a long-shot attempt to shake things up.

The eventual vote on the treaty suggests that the chances for passage of the treaty, even without the Pakenham Letter, were slim and none – and slim, as they say, had just left town. Remember that, because the annexation document was in the form of a treaty, it needed to pass by a 2-1 margin (two-thirds of those voting). In fact, it was rejected by more than a 2-1 majority:


For Against
Northern Dems 5- 7
Northern Whigs 0- 13
Southern Dems 10- 1
Southern Whigs 1- 14
Total 16- 35

John Calhoun was one smart guy. I think it's safe to say that he knew that the treaty was DOA when he wrote the Pakenham Letter.

Langdon Cheves: Chivis or Cheevz?

A few weeks ago, Brett Schulte had a post on pronouncing Civil War names and places.

I thought of Brett's post because I was wondering today about the pronunciation of the last name of South Carolinian Langdon Cheves.

I still don't know. Wikipedia (link above) states "pronounced chivis." So do this site and this site.

On the other hand, this site, this site and this site claim the name is pronounced cheevz.

John Calhoun's Pakenham Letter: Why?

I ended the last post with Merrill D. Peterson’s question:

Politicians then and historians since have debated [John C.] Calhoun’s motives for writing the Pakenham Letter. The [John Tyler] administration line on annexation was that it was strictly a question of national interest unconnected with slavery. Calhoun’s letter, which went to the Senate along with the treaty and became public knowledge on April 27 [,1844], placed annexation on pro-slavery grounds. Could he have been oblivious to the effect of this?

Years ago, Calhoun biographer John C. Wiltse contended that Calhoun did not anticipate that the letter would become public. Subsequent historians, however, have uniformly rejected this view. Charles Sellers, for example, responded, “Wiltse contends that Calhoun did not anticipate that his Pakenham letter would be published, but Bemis asks logically, ‘If so, why did he write it?’”

The chronology also renders Wiltse’s suggestion ludicrous. The Pakenham Letter is dated Thursday April 18. On Monday April 22, the treaty and the letter went to the Senate. Transcription of copies would probably have begun almost immediately after the letter was sent. Did Calhoun send the letter and then a few hours later smack his head in the realization that he now needed to provide it to the Senate? Ridiculous.

It is virtually impossible then, to reach any conclusion other than that Calhoun knew, when he wrote the letter, that he would be sending it to the Senate. He must also have known that it would create a firestorm. Why would he do such a thing?

William W. Freehling, for one, finds no mystery. Calhoun, he maintains, was simply being Calhoun. For some time, his primary goal had been to raise southern white consciousness and encourage the formation of a sectional southern party. This was a perfect opportunity to galvanize the south. The north, confronted by a unified south, would then have to cave:

No pre-Civil War mystery is less mysterious. Calhoun here pursued the policy he had deployed since nullification times. First he would find the issue to teach Southerners that outsiders hid antislavery intent behind camouflaged methods of proceeding. His issue would arouse southern apologists from their preference to diffuse blacks away. An awakened Slavepower would then compel Northerners into a pure states’ rights party, which would settle the precipitating issue the South’s way.

Prof. Freehling also questions whether Calhoun’s tactic put the administration and the treaty in any worse a position than they would have been otherwise. First, northern Whigs would almost certainly vote against the treaty no matter what the accompanying documents showed concerning the administration’s intent, and at least some northern Democrats would be forced to follow suit. Second, even without the Pakenham Letter the records to be delivered to the Senate would be littered with numerous letters and memoranda showing that many members of the administration had sought annexation to protect slavery and advance the interests of the south.

In fact, Prof. Freehling asserts that the strategy that Calhoun adopted (as Freehling understands it) was the only potentially winning strategy. “Calhoun’s scenario of rallying enough slaveholders to push enough Northern Democrats to stop evading the issue was exactly the way the election of 1844 and its annexation aftermath transpired.”

Merrill D. Peterson appears to make a similar point. Rallying the south was both desirable in itself and probably the only potentially winning strategy. “By linking Texas annexation to the defense of slavery, he divided political parties at the Mason and Dixon Line, terrifying [Henry] Clay and the Whigs and undercutting [Martin] Van Buren in the South.”

In her review of the literature, Norma Lois Peterson cites two other historians who likewise believe that Calhoun’s letter reflected a calculated political gamble. At best, he might convince southern Whigs to support the treaty without losing northern Democrats. If the worst happened, and northern Democrats voted against, at least he would have alerted southerners to the danger they faced:

George Poage thinks Calhoun wanted his letter to initiate a general debate with the British government over slavery, hoping this would alarm southern Whigs and bring them into a section bloc under his leadership. Their votes were necessary to ratification, but as yet, they remained loyal to Whig policy and seemed oblivious to the growing danger to their “way of life.”

To William R. Brock, “all evidence suggests that Calhoun knew what he was doing and calculated the odds.” Early in March, weeks before Calhoun had discovered Aberdeen’s letter, he lamented the disunity in the South . . .. Calhoun was convinced that southern Whigs would vote against the treaty unless they could be alerted to the impending destruction of their slave property . . .. The protection of slavery had to be made the central issue of annexation. This would be a test, not only for southern Whigs, but also for northern Democrats.

Merrill Peterson’s reference to Van Buren points up another potential and not inconsistent motive that has been highlighted by Charles Sellers in James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843-1846. As of April 1844, it was generally assumed that Van Buren would be nominated as the Democratic candidate for president. As I noted in the last post, Van Buren had avoided the annexation issue like the plague during 1837-1841. In fact, he continued to oppose immediate annexation and would shortly issue a public letter to that effect.

As of mid-April, however, Van Buren had not yet announced his position. On Monday, April 15, 1844, the principal Democratic newspaper, Francis Preston Blair’s Washington Globe, endorsed annexation. Tyler and Calhoun, Sellers argues, incorrectly assumed that this meant that Van Buren was about to come out in favor of annexation and steal the issue that Tyler still hoped would somehow earn him a second term. (In fact, Blair produced the editorial at Andrew Jackson’s urging and over Van Buren’s objection.) By casting annexation as a pro-slavery initiative, they would force Van Buren to back off:

On Monday, April 15, [1844,] the Globe’s endorsement of annexation appeared according to promise, but the treaty did not. Learning in advance that the Globe would endorse the treaty, Tyler and Calhoun had jumped to the conclusion that Van Buren was about to rob them of the political fruits of their toils by coming out for annexation. “If the Globe, or any other organ of Mr. Van Buren, shall attempt to appropriate the measure in a manner to operate on the Baltimore Convention, or at the polls,” warned the Tyler organ in reply to Blair’s editorial, “we shall denounce such a proceeding.” Holding back the treaty from the Senate, Calhoun set to work to accomplish something Blair had warned Van Buren about a month before: introducing “stipulations on the negro question calculated to make it [annexation] odious in the north & peculiarly a southern question.”

About the illustration:

A pro-Democrat cartoon forecasting the collapse of Whig opposition to the annexation of Texas. James K. Polk, the expansionist candidate, stands at right near a bridge spanning "Salt River." He holds an American flag and hails Texans Stephen Austin (left) and Samuel Houston aboard a wheeled steamboat-like vessel "Texas." Austin, waving the flag of the Lone Star Republic, cries, "All hail to James K. Polk, the frined [sic] of our Country!" The Texas boat has an eagle figurehead and a star on its prow. Below the bridge pandemonium reigns among the foes of annexation. Holding onto a rope attached to "Texas" above, they are dragged into Salt River. Led by Whig presidential nominee Henry Clay, they are (left to right) Theodore Frelinghuysen, Daniel Webster, Henry A. Wise, and an unidentified figure whose legs are tangled in the rope. Clay: "Curse the day that ever I got hold of this rope! this is a bad place to let go of it--But I must!" Frelinghuysen: "Oh evil day, that ever I got into the footsteps of my predecessor." Webster: "If we let go, we are ruined, and if we hold on--Oh! crackee!" Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, straddling a barrel labeled "Abolition" in the river, shouts at Clay, "Avaunt! unholy man! I will not keep company with a blackleg!" referring to the candidate's reputation as a gambler.

John Calhoun's Pakenham Letter: The Background

Scholars have long puzzled over why John Caldwell Calhoun chose to write the Pakenham Letter. But first, some background.

In September 1841, members of the Whig caucus read “His Accidency” John Tyler out of the Whig party. Although now a man without a party, Tyler continued to harbor dreams of a second term. Perhaps he could persuade the Democrats to nominate him in 1844, or maybe he could form a third party or run as an independent backed by a coalition of southern Democrats disenchanted with the probable Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren and conservative, state-right Whigs.

As part of this pipe dream, Tyler conceived the idea of boldly pushing for the annexation of the Republic of Texas. Both Democrats and Whigs had studiously avoided the issue for years because they recognized how hot a potato it would likely become. In particular, the annexation of Texas, in which slavery was legal, threatened to ignite disputes over the peculiar institution and sectional tensions. In addition, Mexico had never conceded the independence of what it viewed as a rebellious province. Annexation thus presented the likelihood of war. Andrew Jackson had therefore contented himself with recognition of Texas rather than annexation before he left office in March 1847, and his Democratic successor Martin Van Buren (in office March 1837- March 1841) had avoided the issue like the plague.

In May 1843, Daniel Webster, the last member of the original cabinet that Tyler inherited from William Henry Harrison, resigned his position as Secretary of State after completing negotiation of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Tyler responded by nominating as Webster’s successor his Secretary of the Navy and old friend and confidante, Abel P. Upshur. Upshur, who hailed from the eastern shore of Virginia, was, like Tyler, a conservative, state-rights Whig. He also was an enthusiastic advocate of annexation. Upshur assumed office in July 1843 and promptly entered into secret negotiations designed to result in the annexation of Texas via a treaty to be presented to the Senate.

Fast-forwarding eight months or so, Upshur’s negotiations and the proposed treaty were virtually complete by late February 1844. At that point, as I mentioned in the last post, chance intervened. On February 28, 1844, Upshur was killed by an explosion on board the USS Princeton. Tyler, who could turn to neither mainstream Democrats nor Whigs for a replacement, reached out (reluctantly or otherwise – it is not clear) to the quintessential anti-party man, none other than John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina, who assumed his duties at State a month later on April 1, 1844.

Meanwhile, however, news of the secret negotiations had leaked. Based on an inadvertent hint from Upshur before his death, Daniel Webster had figured out in February that a treaty was imminent, and he relayed the information to Whig allies. In March, Robert C. Winthrop introduced a resolution in the House demanding information. It quickly became apparent that the issue threatened to become a sectional one, with northern Whigs in particular denouncing the rumored treaty as a conspiracy of the slave interests.

Without admitting the existence of the negotiations, the administration backed efforts by friends who endorsed annexation as a commercial and strategic boon to nation as a whole. on a non-sectional basis. Tyler reportedly believed that any mention of the slavery issue or attempt to push annexation as a protection for the south would be fatal to ratification. Indeed, it appears that, for this reason, Tyler pushed to have the treaty signed and submitted for ratification before Calhoun became Secretary.

Such was not to be, because the Texas envoy did not arrive in Washington to sign the treaty until the last day of March, just as Calhoun assumed his new post. After final details were worked out, the treaty was signed Friday April 12, 1844.

The treaty was not, however, submitted to the Senate until Monday April 22. There were certainly understandable and legitimate reasons for the delay. Calhoun used the intervening ten days to approach the Mexican minister in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the likelihood of war after the treaty was formally announced. On a more practical level, in a world without word processors, faxes and email, documents had to be transcribed and cover letters had to be composed and approved.

But the delay was also occasioned in part by Calhoun’s apparently inexplicable decision to write a letter concerning Texas to the British minister to the United States, Richard Pakenham. Here we must take a step back.

Five months earlier, George Hamilton-Gordon, Lord Aberdeen, the British Foreign Secretary, had sent a dispatch dated December 26, 1843 to the British ministry in the United States, the contents of which were intended to be conveyed to the American Secretary of State. When the newly-appointed Pakenham arrived in Washington in February 1844, he discovered that Aberdeen’s message had not been communicated to Upshur. Pakenham remedied the omission by reading the message to Upshur and then sending him a copy. Upshur did not respond before he was killed on February 28, and acting secretary of state John Nelson apparently did not regard a response as necessary during his brief tenure (from the end of February to the end of March).

In fact, the Aberdeen message (the full text of which may be found in the Congressional Globe) was quite benign and conciliatory. In brief, Aberdeen confirmed (as the British Government had previously expressed) that the government preferred that slavery be abolished in Texas. However, he made clear that Britain had no designs on Texas and would take no actions to achieve that result. Norma Lois Peterson describes the dispatch in somewhat greater detail:

Aberdeen’s tone was courteous, not hostile. He admitted that his government had pressed Mexico to acknowledge the independence of Texas, but it had done so with “no occult design, either with reference to the slavery which now exists, and which we desire to see abolished in Texas.” It was well known to the United States and to every other nation, Aberdeen explained, that Great Britain desired and was “constantly exerting herself to procure the general abolition of slavery throughout the world.” But in attempting this, Britain would do nothing in a secret or underhanded manner. “We should rejoice if the recognition of that country [Texas] by the Mexican Government should be accompanied by an engagement on the part of Texas to abolish slavery eventually and under proper conditions”; but Britain did not intend to exercise improper authority on either Mexico or Texas. “We shall counsel, but we shall not seek to compel, or unduly control, either party. So far as Great Britain is concerned, provided all other States act with equal forbearance,” Mexico and Texas were at liberty “to make their own unfettered arrangements,” in regard to slavery or any other matter.

President Tyler reportedly took the message for what it was – an attempt to be conciliatory notwithstanding a difference in principle. As Calhoun told Pakenham, the president expressed his appreciation for the British government’s disavowal of any intention to disturb the internal tranquility of slaveholding states, although he regretted that Great Britain had officially transmitted its policy of abolition.

Calhoun, however, would not take yes for an answer and decided to escalate matters. In response, he composed and sent to Pakenham an incendiary reply dated April 18, 1844. Remarkably, I have not been able to locate a copy the “Pakenham Letter” online. For those with access to specialized databases or research or law libraries, it may be found at Senate Documents, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. 50-53 and Richard K. Cralle (ed.), The Works of John C. Calhoun, Vol. 5, pp. 333-347. Here is William W. Freehling’s description:

The administration, wrote the Secretary of State, “regards with deep concern the avowal” that England was “constantly exerting herself” to procure world-wide antislavery. The administration was also appalled that England was urging emancipation as “one of the conditions on which Mexico should acknowledge” Texas. “It would be difficult for Texas in her actual condition,” emphasized Calhoun, “to resist” this pressure, even “supposing the influence and exertion of Great Britain” remained within Lord Aberdeen’s “limits.”

An emancipated Texas, continued the Carolinian, would give “Great Britain the most efficient means of effecting in the neighboring States of this Union what she avows to be her desire to do in all countries where slavery exists.” A free labor Texas “would expose the weakest and most vulnerable portions” of slaveholders’ “frontiers” to inroads. But while England’s hope is to end what she calls our evil, warned Calhoun, our mission is to perpetuate what we consider our blessing. Under southern Christian slavery, bragged the American Secretary of State, “the negro race” has attained an unprecedented “elevation in morals, intelligence,” and “civilization.” The United States, concluded Calhoun, “acting in obedience” to racial “obligation,” and “as the most effectual if not the only means of guarding against the threatened danger . . . has concluded an annexation treaty.”

In a subsequent letter, dated April 27, 1844, Calhoun drove home the point that annexation “was made necessary in order to preserve domestic institutions . . . deemed essential to their safety and prosperity.”

“It was,” Merrill D. Peterson has coyly noted, “an unusual diplomatic dispatch.”

Meanwhile, on Monday April 22, 1844, four days after the dispatch of the first letter, the Secretary of State formally transmitted the proposed treaty with Texas to the Senate under seal. Based on precedent, and apparently presuming that the Senate would immediately call for production of supporting materials in any event, Calhoun also sent with the treaty itself copies of related documents and correspondence – including the Pakenham Letter.

Ironically, President Tyler’s letter of transmittal to the Senate emphasized the importance of the treaty to the nation as a whole, not its sectional benefit to the south. The inclusion of the Pakenham Letter, however, insured that there would be a sectional explosion and virtually guaranteed defeat of the treaty, which required ratification by two-thirds of the Senate under Article II, Section 2.

The question, then, is why Calhoun wrote the letter. Merrill D. Peterson summarizes the conundrum:

Politicians then and historians since have debated Calhoun’s motives for writing the Pakenham Letter. The administration line on annexation was that it was strictly a question of national interest unconnected with slavery. Calhoun’s letter, which went to the Senate along with the treaty and became public knowledge on April 27 [,1844], placed annexation on pro-slavery grounds. Could he have been oblivious to the effect of this?

In the next post, I will survey some possible answers.

Two Short Takes on Historical Inevitability

Having posted recently on the inevitability of the Civil War (or lack thereof), I can't miss the opportunity to flag Dimitri's recent post sardonically noting an attempt by the Director of James Buchanan's Wheatland estate to revive Old Buck's reputation by asserting that nobody elected in 1856 could have averted the war. As I have suggested here and here, quite possibly the opposite is true.

All of which brings to mind one of my favorite quotes, by Merrill D. Peterson, concerning the February 28, 1844 explosion on board the USS Princeton, which killed (among others) John Tyler's Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur and resulted in the installation of John Caldwell Calhoun as his successor. The explosion, Peterson observed, was "one of those random events which in its consequences makes a mockery of every attempt to impose some grand law on the history of nations." I suppose the same characterization might apply to the fact that "His Accidency" became president in the first place.

Barbara Boxer is a Pompous Ass

Nuff said.

Brett Schulte Is Looking for History Carnival Nominations

Over at TOCWOC, Brett Schulte reminds us that he is hosting the next History Carnival on or about July 1 and asks other bloggers to spread the word that he is looking for nominations. I hereby comply with his request.

The illustration at the top of the post is included only because (a) I really like it, and (b) I've been thinking about John Calhoun and the annexation of Texas:

A satire on the Democrats' approach to the delicate question of the annexation of Texas. In marked contrast to his portrayal of the issue as a beautiful woman in "Virtuous Harry" (no. 1844-27), the artist here presents Texas as the ugly hag War or Chaos, brandishing a dagger, pistols, whips, and manacles. She embodies the threat of war with Mexico, feared by American opponents of annexation. The whips and manacles in her left hand may also allude to slavery, whose expansion into the new territory was desired by southern annexationists. Bucholzer parodies Van Buren's evasion of the controversial and sectionally divisive issue and Democratic candidates Polk and Dallas's motives in favoring the measure. Senators Thomas Hart Benton and John C. Calhoun confront Van Buren with Texas, whom they support on a plank across their shoulders. Calhoun says, "Come, Matty, we introduce you to the Texas Question, what do you say to her Ladyship?" Van Buren, backing away, replies, "Take any other shape but that and my firm nerves shall never tremble!" Andrew Jackson, who prods Van Buren from behind with his cane says, "Stand up to your lick-log Matty or by the Eternal you'll back into Salt River before you know it." In the background right are Polk and Dallas. Polk says, "What say you Dallas? She's not the handsomest Lady I ever saw but that $25,000 a year-- Eh! it's worth a little stretching of Conscience!" (The annual salary of a U.S. President was $25,000.)

Were Cultural and Economic Dissimilarities Causes of the Civil War?

I’d like to address another facet of Bob’s interesting post concerning whether the Civil War was avoidable after Lincoln’s election. In his discussion, Bob places a good deal of emphasis on the cultural and economic dissimilarities of the North and the South. As such, it provides a good opportunity to explore whether and, if so, in what way, these dissimilarities were causes of the War.

Before turning to Bob’s contentions, some background. In a post entitled Cultural Differences and the Civil War, I cited and quoted from David M. Potter’s masterpiece, The Impending Crisis, in support of the proposition that cultural differences do not explain the war. Prof. Potter’s cogent argument is worth repeating:

To begin with, the cultural argument exaggerates the points of diversity between North and South, minimizes the similarities, and leaves out of account all the commonalities and shared values . . .. These features had proved their reality and their importance by nourishing the strong nationalism which was in full vigor by the 1840s. Further, any explanation which emphasizes the traditionalism of the South is likely to lose sight of the intensely commercial and acquisitive features of the cotton economy.

Cultural dissimilarities exist between or among sections or groups in many countries. Yet they usually do not lead to war. Likewise, in the United States cultural differences between North and South were probably greater during the founding period and the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century than they were in 1860, and differences persisted long after the Civil War ended. Yet southerners were in the forefront of founding the nation and the nationwide Second Party system, and enlisted in the United States army and fought under the American flag in 1898 and 1917.

The cultural diversity argument fails because it cannot account for these phenomena: To explain an antagonism which sprang up suddenly, and died down suddenly, the historian does not need to discover, and cannot effectively use, a factor which has been constant over a long period, as the cultural difference between the North and the South has been. He needs to identify a factor which can cause bitter disagreement even among a people who have much basic homogeneity.

Likewise, Prof. Potter addressed and, in my view, persuasively dismantled the argument that economic dissimilarities caused the War:

The flaw in the economic explanation, when it is rigidly applied, is that history can show many instances in which economic diversities and conflicts existed without producing the separatist tendencies of acute sectionalism. Economic dissimilarities may, in just the opposite way, promote harmony between two regions, if each supplements the other, and if their combined resources can give them self-sufficiency. For example, in the United States, the Middle West and the East have had very dissimilar economies, and their interests have often clashed violently, but since the diverse economies could be made to supplement one another in important ways, a separatist sectionalism never developed in the Middle West. Could not the economy of the South have been drawn into some similar interdependence? In the United States in the forties, the South’s cotton exports paid for the imports of the entire country, and it is an arbitrary theory which would deny that North and South might have found roles, to some degree complementary, in an economy of national self-sufficiency.

Finally, Prof. Potter also debunked the suggestion that cultural and economic differences somehow joined forces to create a causative sum that was greater than the whole of its parts. The two individual elements, Prof. Potter argued, differed fundamentally in their emphases, and it was not apparent they reinforced one another:

It is possible to join the cultural and the economic explanations in one overall analysis that begins by demonstrating the existence of social dissimilarities which, in themselves, do not necessarily cause friction, and then goes on to show how these dissimilarities are translated into specific conflicts of interest. But though the two may be treated as complementary in this way, they differ basically in emphasis. At bottom, the cultural explanation assumes that people quarrel when they are unlike one another; the economic explanation assumes that no matter how much alike they may be, they will quarrel if the advantage of one is the disadvantage of the other. One argues that important cultural dissimilarities cause strife; the other that strife causes the opposing groups to rationalize their hostility to one another by exaggerating unimportant dissimilarities. One explains sectionalism as a conflict of values; the other, as a conflict of interests. One sees it as a struggle for identity; the other as a struggle for power.

All that said, it may well be that Bob is in fact saying something quite different. The most substantial clue comes, I believe, toward the beginning of Bob’s discussion (emphasis added):

So, one must ask why the southern states made such an extreme response to Lincoln’s election. The reasons are complex and there is no way I can discuss them in any depth here. Suffice to say that there were economic, social, and political reasons for the break, and they all begin with slavery, with the perceived right to hold property in the form of a human being.

Although Bob goes on to discuss economic, social and political differences between the North and the South, the context of the discussion suggests that he sees these differences as arising, ultimately, from the root cause of slavery. In other words, the cultural and economic (and political) differences Bob discusses were effects or manifestations rather than ultimate causes themselves.

This distinction is precisely the one made by Prof. Potter. Cultural and/or economic differences between the sections were not the root causes of the War, Potter maintains – slavery was. But slavery and disputes over slavery did have the effect (among others) of magnifying and distorting perceived social and economic differences:

Thus in cultural and economic matters, as well as in terms of values, slavery had an effect which no other sectional factor exercised in isolating North and South from each other. As they became isolated, instead of reacting to each other as they were in actuality, each reacted to a distorted mental image of the other – the North to an image of a southern world of lascivious and sadistic slavedrivers; the South to the image of a northern world of cunning Yankee traders and of rabid abolitionists plotting slave insurrections. This process of substituting stereotypes could be very damaging indeed to the spirit of union, for it caused both northerners and southerners to lose sight of how much alike they were and how many values they shared.

Furthermore, Potter argues, these perceived differences, once established, themselves amplified tensions. Potter describes what amounts to a feedback circuit in which slavery and negative stereotypes continually reinforced one another:

[The process of substituting stereotypes] also had an effect of changing men’s attitudes toward the disagreements which are always certain to arise in politics: ordinary, resolvable disputes were converted into questions of principle, involving rigid, unnegotiable dogma. Abstractions, such as the question of the legal status of slavery in areas in which there were no slaves and to which no one intended to take any, became points of honor and focuses of contention which rocked the government to its foundation. Thus the slavery issue gave a false clarity and simplicity to sectional diversities which were otherwise qualified and diffuse. One might say that the issue structured and polarized many random, unoriented points of conflict on which sectional interest diverged. It transformed political action from a process of accommodation to a mode of combat. Once this divisive tendency set in, sectional rivalry increased the tensions of the slavery issue and the slavery issue embittered sectional rivalries, in a reciprocating process which the majority of Americans found themselves unable to check even though they deplored it.

Although Prof. Potter does not put it this way, from this perspective it is possible to see perceptions of economic and particularly cultural differences as amounting to a sort of secondary cause of the War.

Was the Civil War Inevitable? The Secession of South Carolina

In his excellent new blog, Thoughts, Essays and Musings on the Civil War, Bob poses the question “Given Lincoln’s election in 1860, was the Civil War avoidable?” I thought I’d put in my two cents.

Luckily, I wasn’t one of Bob’s students, because this is precisely the sort of question I have trouble with. Most of the problem is that I see too many questions or issues within the question: I get bogged down in an infinite regression. The question can’t be answered, for example, without first considering the question whether the secession of the southern states was inevitable as of November 1860. And that question can’t be answered without first considering whether the secession of any southern state was inevitable as of November 1860.

I also get tied up in knots because there are all sorts of intermediate issues or hypotheses that must be considered. For example, what if secession had succeeded elsewhere in the deep south, but conditional unionists had been successful in staving off immediate secession in Georgia, where the ultimate vote proved fairly close?

Finally, Bob’s question also gets me tangled up in issues relating to counterfactuals, for after all this is in effect an attempt to pose a counterfactual scenario. But, to be worthwhile, counterfactuals need to be plausible. Some counterfactuals I can dream up are plainly beyond the pale: South Carolina is struck by a massive plague; Lincoln endorses constitutional amendments granting the right to bring slaves into all the territories and outlawing all state personal liberty laws. But in closer cases, where do you draw the line between plausible and implausible?

Having reduced myself to utter confusion, let me start with what seems to be the easiest sub-question: was the secession of even a single state inevitable in November 1860? It’s very hard for me to imagine a scenario in which at least one state did not do so. But I can imagine events unfolding somewhat differently than they wound up doing.

In Secessionists Triumphant, for example, William Freehling tells a dramatic story of a fortuitous event that hastened the calling of the South Carolina secession convention (previously discussed here). After Lincoln’s election, the most radical South Carolinians pushed for a secession convention as soon as possible: December 17, 1860. They lost. On November 9, 1860 the South Carolina Senate endorsed a January 15, 1861 date by a vote of 44-1. This created the threat, radicals feared, that “the legislature’s timetable might well leave South Carolina deciding [on secession] last, so that the Lower South’s majority could drag the most fiery state into a southern convention, where an Upper South majority might rule.” At about the same time, South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond wrote a letter in which he counseled against immediate secession.

Luckily for the radicals, Hammond’s letter was suppressed and never became public. And then a chance event permitted them to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat. On the evening of November 9, 1860 a dinner was held in Charleston to celebrate the opening of a railroad link between that city and Savannah, Georgia. Radicals arranged to have several of the Georgia celebrants give speeches in which they declared themselves, and by extension Georgia, in favor of South Carolina’s immediate secession.

The crowd was electrified. The celebrants wired the legislature in Columbia to demand an immediate convention and advising that they were hiring a special train to send representatives to enforce the message. The emissaries arrived at 2:00 p.m. on November 10. To make a long story short, the wire, the emissaries, and the belief that Georgia stood behind her (reinforced by a rumor that Georgia Senator Robert Toombs had resigned) did the trick:

The smothering atmosphere engulfed Columbia after the transforming news from Charleston arrived. By 4:30 P.M. on Saturday, November 10, almost exactly twenty-four hours after the Senate had voted 44-1 for a January 15 convention (with elections for delegates on January 8), the House voted 117-0 for a December 17 convention (with elections for delegates on December 6). That evening, the Senate concurred 42-0. Two days later, the . . . [December 17] convention date sailed unanimously through all three readings in both houses.

Professor Freehling believes that secession and war remained probable even if the date of the South Carolina convention had not been moved up. Charleston radicals might have mounted a coup d’etat and taken the state out of the Union.

If illegal mobs failed to cancel a South Carolina legislature delay, a Mississippi convention might have seized the Separatist initiative . . .. Alternatively, a southern convention might have met and served Separatists ironically well. Uncompromising Lower South delegates might have stormed out in protest against Upper South compromising. Such an exodus would likely have led to a cooperative Lower South secession. . . . Or the Lower and Upper South might have agreed on demands for northern concessions that Lincoln would have rejected. A northern rejection of a southern convention’s ultimatum could have led to disunion as swiftly as did the Charleston and Savannah Railroad’s celebration. All in all, the chances for the nation to finish 1861 peacefully intact were very poor.

Nonetheless, Prof. Freehling cannot eliminate the possibility that delay might have averted secession:

Thus as South Carolina Separatists feared (and Cooperationists elsewhere hoped), several weeks of delay just might have dulled the first sting of Lincoln’s election, even in South Carolina and then in Mississippi too. Subsequently, a southern convention just might have settled for an overt act ultimatum: No secession now but automatic disunion hereafter, if Republicans secured a federal antislavery edict. Or perhaps a southern convention just might have insisted on northern concessions that President-elect Lincoln might have considered negotiable. Or perhaps an unexpected coincidence, akin to the accident of the railroad’s timing, might again have deflected history a little off course [true in theory, but this sort of speculation might be deemed to violate the rule against unreasonable counterfactuals, discussed above]. All humans know, or should know, that the fortuitous can somewhat deflect apparently remorseless trends at any time or place.