John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union (review)

BOOK REVIEWS John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union. By Albert D. Kirwan. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962. Pp. xii, 514. $8.50.) Professor Kirwan evidently likes variety in his subjects. In 1951 he published a fine book, Revolt of the Rednecks, dealing with the sweaty and violent politics of Mississippi from 1876 to 1925. Now he has written a biography of a man light-years away from such earthy hellions as Bilbo and Vardaman—to wit, John Jordan Crittenden (1786-1863). Crittenden was a Kentuckian whose public career was long and generally blameless. He was a patient and modest man, loyal to his community and country, and willing to abide in Henry Clay's shadow until 1848. He served his state as governor and long-term Senator, and the two national Whig administrations as AttorneyGeneral . His prejudices and partisanships were neither original nor examined, but on the other hand he was free of the petty spite and vanity of a good many of his contemporaries. In sum, Crittenden comes across as a kind of noble Roman—and about as lifeless as one, too. He was on hand at some important moments in history, but Kirwan, despite valorous efforts, never demonstrates conclusively that they would have turned out differently without him. In fact, the climax of the book is in the story of Crittenden's failure to change the course of events in 1861. Mr. Kirwan thinks that Crittenden came close to greatness when, as an old man of seventy-four, he cast himself as heir to Clay the Pacifier by a series of proposals to settle the secession crisis. Conversely, Kirwan thinks that Lincoln and the Republicans blundered seriously in not grasping at Crittenden 's plan, the last life-preserver in sight before peace went down for the third time. It is here that most readers of Civil War History will find subject matter that interests them, and it is here that I would like most explicitly to disagree. Crittenden's propositions were few and simple. The old Missouri Compromise line between freedom and slavery should be restored in the remaining territories. In addition, there should be a set of "unamendable" amendments to the Constitution. The most important of diem would specifically forbid the Federal government ever to abolish slavery in the states. Congress would also be barred from ending slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland and Virginia, or from ending it on Federal property within a slave state, or from interfering in any way with the domestic slave trade. Congress could never deny the South the right to count three-fifths of its slaves for representation. There were other suggestions, too, but these are enough to deal with. 437 438civil wa r history Kirwan argues that the first of these proposals should have been acceptable to the Republicans, since they had organized their party in 1854 precisely to demand the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, killed by the KansasNebraska Act. As for the rest, nothing in the Republican 1860 platform specifically conflicted with any of them. Nothing, therefore, necessarily prevented Lincoln from giving Crittenden's plan the blessing of the incoming administration. In that case, secessionists who were howling that "black Republicanism " meant the end of slavery would have been stopped in their tracks. Hence, no secession, no war. Q.E.D. Yet Mr. Kirwan (and many respectable historians who agree with him) pays no attention whatever to the drastic implication of those "unamendable" changes in the Constitution. By the end of 1860 the Republicans were no longer concerned with the Missouri Compromise or the admitted handful of slaves in New Mexico Territory. They wanted slavery formally excluded from the unorganized West as a token of their hope that it would be put, in Lincoln's phrase, on the way to ultimate extinction. They wanted the country to recognize the course of history. They had just won a constitutional and lawful election with these demands. Crittenden's plan would nullify that election. It would give Republicans the White House at the price of their most important principle. If adopted, his amendments would have denied to the American people any future possibility...