Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union by Daniel W. Crofts (review)

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Unionadds to Daniel W. Crofts's previous work examining the troubled time immediately preceding the Civil War with an intriguing account of the role played by the "other" thirteenth amendment that was proposed and debated during the winter and spring of 1860–1861. Largely neglected by historians, this thirteenth amendment was designed to preserve the Union by forbidding any future amendments to abolish slavery in the states where it presently existed. The proposed amendment passed both the House and the Senate, President James Buchanan signed it, Abraham Lincoln as presidentelect endorsed it, and six states ratified it. "The framers of the constitutional amendment," Crofts notes, "hoped to counter the hysteria in the white South and to contain, and ultimately reverse, the secession movement" (p. 239). This was a chance for peace not war, and Crofts infuses the crisis with a bracing dose of historical contingency, reminding today's readers that in 1861 the majority of white Americans, including Lincoln, had no intention of destroying the slave system or bringing about emancipation.

The book unfolds in four parts. The first describes the antebellum debates among abolitionists and antislavery northern politicians as they struggled to reconcile the constitutional protection of slavery with moral, ethical, and economic objections to the institution. The largest number accepted moral suasion as the preferred weapon to kill slavery, and by the 1840s the political antislavery movement brought forth a muscular opposition, with its leaders denouncing slavery but proposing to "denationalize" it by making it a state issue, in the hopes of denying its spread to the territories (p. 13). The rise of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party added to the toxic sectionalism of the times, but as Crofts points out, "the root issue [was] … the security of the slave system in the states where it existed," and not "the future of slavery in the territories where it did not yet exist" (p. 24). The presidential election of 1860 brought a moderate Republican to office but did nothing to stop the secession of seven Deep South states. Many Washington, D.C., insiders from the North and upper South were caught unprepared by the act and too late realized their profound miscalculation of the national mood. Was there any chance to save the United States from its self-inflicted termination?

The answer was yes. The second, third, and fourth parts provide a riveting portrayal of the rise, fall, and fizzle of the "other thirteenth amendment." Northern leaders and a surprising number of upper South Unionists attempted to arrest and reverse secession by forging some kind of a compromise. The proposed thirteenth amendment emerged as a constitutionally conservative compromise with the best prospect to persuade white southerners that their property rights would be respected in perpetuity. With impressive research, Crofts deftly interweaves biographies of a diverse group of minor and major players, including Lincoln and William Henry Seward, with a sharp analysis of the complicated negotiations that ensued. Adding to the apt quotations from newspapers and other primary sources, Crofts draws on a rich vein of correspondence from vexed constituents reminding their elected officials not to abandon principles for political expediency. The attack on Fort Sumter, however, ended all hopes for a peaceable solution.

Two epilogues and a bibliographical postscript underline Crofts'slively historiographical intervention animating the entire volume. This thirteenth amendment's forgotten story serves to make his argument that too many historians are picking and choosing selected evidence corresponding with twenty-first-century values, thus distorting the past. The Civil War's current portrayal as a progressive march toward emancipation and freedom, Crofts observes, fits a pleasing narrative celebrating a triumphal abolitionism that simply did not exist. While Lincoln...