Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (review)

340CIVIL WAR HISTORY "One Among Many: The United States and National Unification" is the title of Carl Degler's essay in which he finds parallels in the Civil War with various wars of national unification in Europe and with the national movement in Canada. Giving special attention to Switzerland and Germany, he sees similarities between the blood and iron policy of Bismarck and the war policy of Lincoln. Except for Canada, all the other nineteenth-century nations were united by violence. Degler echoes the theme that William B. Hesseltine sounded years ago in his book Lincoln and the War Governors. Hesseltine contended that the Civil War was in reality a war against the states, both North and South, and was truly a war of national unification. The unification theme is treated from a different perspective in Kenneth Stampp's "One Alone? The United States and National Self-determination." Prior to his presidency, Lincoln, along with many other American political leaders, had espoused the cause of self-determination but reversed his thinking when the concept was applied to the South's bid for independence. Before the war's end, however, Lincoln had added the moral cause of emancipation to the North's objectives, thus giving justification to crushing the rebellion beyond the need to keep the Union intact. In "War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt ," Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., justifies the unconstitutional policies of both presidents in light of the grave national emergencies their administrations faced. Both presidents believed that circumventing the Constitution was necessary to save the nation. Schlesinger, in accepting that argument, comes close to suggesting that the end justifies the means. Even less convincing is his view that actions of the two wartime presidents did not provide precedents for later chief executives. The final essay, "War Opponent and War President," by editor Gabor S. Boritt, briefly traces antiwar thought in Western culture and Lincoln's changing attitudes toward war. In early speeches he ridiculed and rejected war, even making fun of his own military record during the so-called Black Hawk War. In Congress he spoke against the Mexican War but voted funds for the troops fighting there. According to Boritt, he was "not a pacifist but a pacific man." Lincoln came to accept war as preferable to disunion, a decision which created a unified nation but left an ambiguous legacy to the nuclear generation. Larry Gara Wilmington College Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy . By Winthrop D. Jordan. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. Pp. 391. $24.95.) Cloaking scandal behind a veil of silence is a Southern art. Whispers of information may leak out, but the full story never will. So it was with the details of plans for a slave revolt near Natchez, Mississippi, in May 1861. In BOOK REVIEWS34I a spring when rumors of slave rebellions swept the South, this one was not the figment of hysterical Southern imaginations. And the retribution of vengeance unleased from the white community makes the word "overkill" seem pale. The outbreak ofthe Civil War fired dreams offreedom among slaves along Second Creek east of Natchez. Communicating across several neighboring plantations, slaves organized their planned insurrection. Local white masters discovered the plot from a white overseer's son, aged eight or nine, present during some of the slaves' discussions. Panic spread among the whites, and a committee was created to get to the bottom of the conspiracy by examining the slaves implicated. Facing the whip and the gallows, the slaves responded variously. Some remained silent; some named others; some probably told their inquisitors what they wanted to hear. By September 1861 at least twenty-seven slaves had been hanged without a legal trial, and thereafter Adams County whites closed ranks to suppress memory of the entire episode. Evidence for the details of these events lies primarily in one document, an account of the slave testimony by one member of the examination committee. Professor Winthrop Jordan reproduces this entire document in the book along with extracts from letters, diaries, and testimony that mention these events. These sources compose approximately one-third of the book, reinforcing his narrative...