The Crisis of the Union, 1860-1861 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS275 While Kettell's book, judged by more than a century of hindsight, does not represent an accurate view of the economics of slavery and of intersectional economic relationships, it is still significant for the role it played in the sectional controversy. Of enduring value is a comprehensive description in Chapter II of developments in the early cotton textile industry. Professor Green's introduction, bibliography, and index will increase the volume 's usefulness to scholars. The introductory sketch of Kettell's life takes note of the high regard held for his writings in commercial centers here and abroad and of the influence which these exercised. The zenith of Kettell's career passed with the secession of the South. His loyal support of the Union after that event did not restore to him his former position of eminence as a writer on economic matters. Removing to San Francisco after the war, he failed to re-establish himself as a trade publisher. He became se forgotten that the place, date, and circumstances of his death are unknown today. James C. Bonner Woman's College of Georgia The Crisis of the Union, 1860-1861. Edited by George Harmon Knoles. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Pp. vii, 115. $3.50.) This volume of essays contains four papers and the comments on each delivered in March, 1963, at Stanford University. Four related questions were posed as the subjects of the papers: why the Republican party came to power; why the Democratic party divided; why the southern states seceded ; and why the Republicans rejected both compromise and secession. Luminaries of the American historical guild were the participants: Professors Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Roy F. Nichols, Avery O. Craven, and David M. Potter offering the papers; and Professors Don E. Fehrenbacher, Robert W. Johannsen, Charles G. Sellers, Jr., and Kenneth M. Stampp commenting. The first three questions were answered in the manner of one who has reached a firm conclusion and seeks chiefly ways to convey his truth to his hearers in stimulating style. Professor Potter, on the other hand, approached his question in a challenging theoretical framework which perhaps was intended to raise more questions than it answered. All the critics appropriately sought some issues to raise with the original presentation and offered significant variants in emphasis if not in conclusion. Professor Sellers found probably the most substantial elements with which to take perceptive issue, indeed suggesting in a complimentary way that Professor Craven had himself become a legitimate subject for historical analysis—and then proceeding to go as far as the law might allow in vivisection. Professor Van Deusen stressed multiple causation but concluded that the single most important factor in Republican party victory was the prospect of the extension of slavery, undergirded by idealistic and practical concepts, "in other words, a moral and economic crusade." His critic of- 276CIVIL WAR HISTORY fered meticulous evidence that many of the generalizations about contributing economic or slavery expansion causes did not survive practical application of the facts and suggested that the Republican party was essentially an antislavery one toward which conservatives, aroused by events of the period, veered. Professor Nichols reiterated his conviction that Democratic party division in 1860 can be understood only in the light of group dynamics and through scrutiny of human failure in party leadership. In partial rebuttal, the commentator concentrated on the "divisive forces that had been building up over the years" and the belief of the "American people on the larger scene . . . that the issues they faced could only be settled outside the normal workings of democratic government." Professor Craven, as ever, was concerned with emotionality and painted a vivid picture of southerners seceding because "the social-intellectual side of the nineteenth century had not come their way" and, as a result, "they were sometimes confused; sometimes reduced to rationalizing; sometimes overwhelmed by guilt." Professor Sellers insisted that it was precisely because the South was already so much a part of the nineteenth-century world that its guilt complexes about slavery made it "stridently aggressive, multiplying the threatening forces of outside criticism until the tension became intolerable. . . ." Professor Potter expressed strong doubt that the options confronting Republicans in 1861...