The Secession Conventions of the South (review)

mentation had he required Southern votes to win? Would he have condemned the institution of slavery in the name of principle and thus conceded all chance of victory? Lincoln managed to isolate the ultimate weakness of the national Democratic party, but at what price? If the nation in 1861 suffered the irony of dividing over an increasingly violent sectional feeling regarding the question of slavery expansion, amid the actual decreasing congeniality of slavery in the territories, Lincoln cannot escape responsibüity. For he above all other Republicans elaborated the notion that the Northern crusade for freedom alone would prevent the eventual triumph of slavery, not only in the territories, but also throughout the nation. One might justify Lincoln's preaching of the doctrine of total conflict as a matter of political privilege, but whatever the apparent validity of the case which he created to prove that die issue of 1858 was one of ultimate total victory or ultimate total defeat for die North in its struggle over the tenitories, it did not reflect much political reality. Of such doctrines wars are made, for they render compromise synonymous widi appeasement and eventual defeat. If these observations question some of the author's approbation of Lincoln's actions during the late fifties, they do not question the quality and significance of this book. For Professor Fehrenbacher has demonstrated that subjects even as fully studied as the Lincoln theme can still benefit from diligent and judicious contemplation. His analysis of many trends of the decade, such as the decline of the Whig party, the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and especially the evolution of Lincoln's own ideas, is superb. His judgments, if pro-Lincoln, are always moderate. Indeed, the autiior has succeeded both in giving some new, exciting twists to many old interpretations and in discovering some balance among the many conflicting notions held by others who have devoted themselves to a study of Lincoln's career. Norman A. Graebner University of Illinois The Secession Conventions of the South. By Ralph A. Wooster. (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1962. Pp. viii, 294. $6.50.) This book fails to assume what would have been taken for granted fifty years ago—that there was class motivation in the decision of the Southern states to secede, that the rich Southerners acted differentiy from the poor, and that the nonslaveholders behaved differentiy from the slaveholders. There has never been any difference in the thinking within various classes of Southern whites. Mr. Wooster, from his study of history, should have assumed this from the failure of the poorer whites to accept the advice of Hinton R. Helper. That critic of ante-bellum social anangements could not convince the nonslaveholders that their interests were in conflict with those of the slaveholders. In the region below the Potomac the poor have almost always admired the rich, much as the rich have admired themselves. Even today 443 444civil war history the common Southern white man bestows fulsome admiration upon wealthy Yankees who give die benefits of die new industrialism. But in keeping with the scholarly traditions of the Princeton University Press, Mr. Wooster refuses to accept such an assumption. Specifically he set about to disprove a hoary legend cherished by Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, who believed that there were class differences in the much-controverted issues of secession. Fifteen slave state conventions made die decision to secede or not to secede in the crisis of 1860-1861. After an examination of the manuscript materials of the census of 1860 Mr. Wooster proves that the economic, slaveholding, and professional standing of the members of the secession conventions could not be conelated with the manner in which they voted on the momentous issue before them. The delegates were not divided in their opinions along class lines. The only significant difference of opinion was tenitorial in nature, east against west, hill against plain, Border States against Cotton States. The author does not present an interesting Marxian verdict like Charles A. Beard did fifty years ago in appraising the motives of die men who wrote the Constitution of die United States. He is prudentiy factual widiout being bold enough to make a generalization. Out...