Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union (review)

A biography of Caleb Cushing ought to make for fascinating reading. Cushing was a renaissance man who seemingly had his fingers in everything. A lawyer, essayist, politician, colonel, diplomat, land speculator—this New Englander born into a Brahmin family experienced all the dramatic changes that took place in America between the 1820s and 1870s. His unfulfilled relationships with women provide grist for psycho-historical analysis. And he was a man of contradictions: though his intellectual curiosity was wide, he was at heart profoundly Victorian in his habits and prejudices.

The last biography of Cushing was written eight decades ago, so the subject matter certainly warrants a fresh examination. And John M. Belohlavek is a superb writer. His prose is crisp and his account of Cushing's career as a congressman, legislator, diplomat, military commander, attorney general, and political meanderer is easy to read, fully detailed, and well-annotated.

The author seems hampered, however, by two forms of cross-pressures, both of which he all but admits in his introductory pages. First, he bemoans the inability of biographers to please both the lay public (which often demands a riveting story without heady analysis) and academicians (who are uncomfortable with the biographical format, even the "life and times" variety, especially when the subject is a prominent white male). Second, he finds frustrating the objectivity that eludes historians, even when trying to write dispassionate social scientific history or a biography without preconceptions while at the same time trying to get their point of view across to readers. Cognizant of these difficulties, the author has written a book that will probably be embraced by neither audience, and its structure lacks a sustained central thesis or focus.

This is not to suggest that Belohlavek has nothing worthwhile to say about Cushing. The author resurrects Cushing's successes as the nation's first minister to China and his work as a diplomatic operative after the Civil War. As is well-known by specialists of the period, Cushing was detested as a political maverick. He was hated first by Whigs when he remained allied with President John Tyler when the latter was read out of the party for vetoing the economic legislation central to the party's program, and then hated even more when as the president of the initial Democratic national convention in 1860, he so strictly adhered to the rule that presidential candidates win support from two-thirds of the delegates that even after southerners bolted the proceedings he prevented Stephen Douglas from winning the nomination. But Cushing, Belohlavek believes, was motivated by a desire to preserve both party unity and the federal union of states itself, not political scheming.

Fair enough, though one could ascribe the same motivations to Cushing's detractors. More important, one reasonably can expect a lengthy biography to do more than challenge a negative characterization of a moderately important politician. The bulk of Broken Glass is a chronological account (with occasional but tepid analysis) in which the author rarely steps back and relates his findings to any larger historiographical schools of thought. In other words, this book could have been written several decades ago, as it does not engage recent or even not-so-recent literature. In the end, it is a workmanlike effort, but one that disappoints, as it takes few chances.