The Civil War Synthesis in American Political History

THE CIVIL WAR SYNTHESIS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY Joel H. Silbey The CrvrL War has dominated our studies of the period between the Age of Jackson and 1861. Most historians of the era have devoted their principal attention to investigating and analyzing the reasons for differences between the North and the South, the resulting sectional conflict and the degeneration of this strife into a complete breakdown of our political system in war. Because of this focus, most scholars have accepted, without question, that differences between the North and the South were the major political influences at work among the American people in the years between the mid-1840's and the war.1 Despite occasional warnings about the dangers of overemphasizing sectional influences, the sectional interpretation holds an honored and secure place in the historiography of the antebellum years.2 We now possess a formidable number of works which, in one way or another, center attention on the politics of sectionalism and clearly demonstrate how much the Civil War dominates our study of American political history before 1861.3 Obviously nothing is wrong in such emphasis if sectionalism was 1 The primary evocation of the sectional theme is found in Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of Sections in American History (New York, 1932). The persistence of the concept is illustrated in the titles and contents of the two books in the "History of the South" series on this period: Charles Sydnor, The Devehpment of Southern Sectionalism, 1819-1848 (Baton Rouge, 1948), and Avery O. Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848-1861 (Austin, 1953). 2 Both Charles Sellers and Thomas P. Govan have called attention to the presence of nonsectional ideas and influences in Southern politics in the 1840's and 1850's. See Charles Grier Sellers, Jr., "Who Were the Southern Whigs?", American Historical Review, LIX ( 1954), 335-337; Thomas P. Govan, "Americans Below the Potomac," in Charles Grier Sellers, Jr. (ed.,) The Southerner as American (Chapel Hill, 1960), pp. 19-39. 3 VVe have, for example, books on the secession movements in the individual states of the South and which usually begin in the 1840's or 1850 at the latest. See, for instance, Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia, 18471861 (Richmond, 1934); J. Carlyle Sitterson, The Secession Movement in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1939); Dorothy Dodd, "The Secession Movement in Florida, 1850-1861," Fhrida Historical Quarterly, XII (1933), 3-24, 45-66. Others in this same tenor include Ulrich B. Phillips, the Course of the South to Secession (New York, 1939), and Craven, Southern Nationalism. 130 indeed the dominant political influence in the antebellum era. However , there is the danger in such emphasis of claiming too much, that in centering attention on the war and its causes we may ignore or play down other contemporary political influences and fail to weigh adequately the importance of nonsectional forces in antebellum politics. And, in fact, several recent studies of American political behavior have raised serious doubts about the importance of sectional differences as far as most Americans were concerned. These have even suggested that the sectional emphasis has created a false synthesis in our study of history which increases the importance of one factor, ignores the significance of other factors, and ultimately distorts the reality of American political life between 1844 and 1861. I Scholars long have used the presidential election of 1844 as one of their major starting points for the sectional analysis of American political history. In a general sense they have considered American expansion into Texas to be the most important issue of that campaign. The issue stemmed from the fact that Texas was a slave area and many articulate Northerners attacked the movement to annex Texas as a slave plot designed to enhance Southern influence widiin the Union. Allegedly because of these attacks, and the Southerners' defending themselves, many people in both North and South found themselves caught up in suchsectional bitterness that the United States took a major step toward civil war.4 Part of this bitterness can be seen, it is pointed out, in the popular vote in New York state where the Whig candidate for the presidency, Henry Clay, lost...