Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836. By William W. Freehling. (New York and London: Harper & Row, 1966. Pp. xiii, 395. $5.95. ) This is an important and significant work. A fresh study of the nullification crisis has long been needed; the early efforts of Boucher and Houston (now fifty and seventy years old respectively) have served the scholar long and well but their inadequacies have become increasingly apparent in the many decades since their publication. This work now fills the need, but its distinguishing characteristic goes beyond this contribution. Not only has the author employed a vast amount of material not available to the earlier writers, as well as the new insights into the pre-Civil War decades which historians have since developed, but he has also placed the nullification controversy in a new and meaningful perspective. His work is not primarily that of a revisionist; rather it breaks new ground in its analysis and interpretation as the author closely scrutinizes the developments during two crucial decades in the key state of the antebellum South. The nullification crisis, which most text writers have considered simply as one of several challenges to the leadership of Andrew Jackson and as an episode in the formulation of a Jacksonian program, takes on novel and exciting dimensions in this larger perspective. The crisis, Professor Freehling contends, was the "central occurrence in the broader transition of South Carolina from the enthusiastic nationalism of 1816 to the extreme sectionalism of 1836." In relating the story of this transition, he has discussed the political history of South Carolina, as well as the economic fortunes and misfortunes of South Carolinians, for nullification to a very large degree was an outgrowth of the state's political and economic experience. The struggles between the nullifiers and the unionists (the latter, as southern unionism generally, deserving, Freehling correctly points out, much more study than they have received) are provided extended treatment. The theoretical foundations of the actions of South Carolinians are expertly analyzed and the reactions of the state to the growing northern abolition movement, manifested in the development of an elaborate proslavery argument, are detailed. Perhaps most significant of all is the theme that runs throughout the book: that the "nullification impulse was to a crucial extent a revealing expression of South Carolina's morbid sensitivity to the beginnings of the antislavery campaign ." The central importance of nullification to the southerners' fears and anxieties concerning their "peculiar institution" is, in this reviewer's opinion, 74 a primary contribution of the study. It was more than coincidence that nullification followed closely on the heels of Garrison's publication of the Liberator and the Nat Turner revolt in Virginia. South Carolina's prominence and leadership in the antebellum South gives this study a wider relevance; although the state's situation was in many respects unique in the South, South Carolinians were nevertheless articulating fears that were felt in varying degrees throughout the section. Attitudes that evolved in the Palmetto State during these crisis years were the same that came to fruition in 1860-1861 (although the book's title, Prelude to Civil War, may be overstating the case a bit) . Lesser-known personalities in the nullification controversy are brought to light and older ones are seen in new perspective. John C. Calhoun, always regarded as the prime mover of nullification, is convincingly portrayed as devoted to both the South and the Union, trying desperately to save both. Lagging behind the fire-eaters, he was reluctant to push nullification to its logical end—secession—and during the crisis, Freehling suggests , he was "almost paralyzed by conflicting loyalties to nation and section." The author accepts, with some reservation, the view of Charles G. Sellers that southern guilt feelings about slavery constituted an important basis for southern actions in the antebellum years. In over-reacting to the growth of northern abolitionism (which at the time posed little real threat to the South) and in magnifying its real importance, the South in effect created its own crisis and inadvertently served to stimulate the antislavery movement. In all of this, nullification played a key role. This book is based on...