The Road to Disunion. Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (review)

80CIVIL WAR HISTORY that a "smoldering resentment of her husband grew" as he went elsewhere to seek the intellectual stimulation that she was unable to give him. McFeely himself asserts that little is known of Anna's feelings, but that does not stop him from speculating about her reaction to her husband's long and frequent absences from home. Douglass's relationship with his children undergoes scrutiny as well. His four surviving offspring are seen as disappointments; they never quite managed to live independent of their more capable father. For instance, McFeely suggests that Douglass wished his eldest daughter, Rosetta, to be like "one of the resourceful, intellectual, active women, at work at important business, that he so much admired." Instead, she failed as a teacher, married a man of little ambition or ability, and never resolved within herself the "contradictory signals" transmitted to her by her incompatible parents. The Douglass sons fared no better. None of them was able to approximate the father's achievements. In an assessment of the accomplishments of the Douglass children against those achievements attained by the Garrisons, McFeely asserts that even though both groups were the progeny of great men, the former lagged a considerable distance behind the latter. But he acknowledges that this was due, at least in part, to the differences in the color of their skin. McFeely also takes Douglass to task for what he concludes is Douglass's failure to recognize the greater needs of the black community once Reconstruction was overturned. Despite a passionate desire to help the former slaves realize the full potential of freedom, Douglass expressed disappointment when blacks failed to measure up to his standards of progress. At times, he seemed almost insensitive to their suffering. For instance, as destitute blacks fled the oppressive South and became a part of the exodus to the West, Douglass urged them to stay and fight. Yet, he never returned to the South himself. McFeely implies that Douglass's emphasis on political rights and self-help proved woefully inadequate for a people who were barely surviving economically. He skillfully shows that Douglass held so steadfastly to his belief in assimilation that he was unable to propose helpful solutions to the problems of the black community when it needed his leadership most. Frederick Douglass is destined to generate a great deal of attention, especially for its insights into Douglass's character. Those who thought they knew the definitive Douglass will find much to reconsider in the McFeely portrayal. Edna Greene Medford Howard University The Road to Disunion. Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. By William W. Freehling. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 640. $30.00.) In this, the first of two volumes, William W. Freehling seeks the solution to what he calls "an important mystery" (vii), namely, why the Southern BOOK REVIEWS81 states seceded from the Union in 1860-61. His quest began with "secession 's complicated climax" and moved, step by step, back in time until he arrived at the nation's founding moment. There he stopped, and it is there that his study commences. (One wonders if he could not have extended his search even further back, with important and illuminating insights.) This is, so to speak, history in reverse gear; or, as Freehling puts it, an "extended Odyssey backwards" (vii). As a consequence, his study bears an inescapable deterministic quality. He knows where he is going and what he will find when he gets there. Each event, each episode, each step along the way is neatly tailored to fit the conclusion. There are no uncertainties, no wrong turns. One might view Freehling's journey as a variation on Willliam H. Seward's celebrated dictum, that the conflict between the sections was an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and that all efforts at compromise were vain and ephemeral. For Seward, the source of conflict was in the antagonism between a free-labor system and a slave-labor system, an explanation that suggests economic as well as political causes. Freehling's irrepressible conflict, on the other hand, is one between "two antithetical abstract systems, democracy and despotism" (viii-ix). His road to disunion is...