Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (review)

Much of the literature regarding the American Civil War caters to a single story of history: war heroes, abolitionists, Radical Republicans, or our nation's favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. When we think of prominent Republican senators during the war, admittedly, William Pitt Fessenden may not come to the forefront of our mind. However, Robert Cook's biography of Fessenden will have scholars and readers alike rethinking their perspective of this Civil War senator; Cook has given us a well written portrait of a man worthy of a Civil War scholar's attention.

Civil War Senator is broken up into seven coherent and chronological chapters, beginning with Fessenden's youth and finishing with the end of his political career. The most provocative chapters focus on the last ten years of his life, during which Fessenden is heavily engaged in powerful speeches on the road to war, he serves as the secretary of treasury during the war, and confronts controversy as a chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction after the war (particularly for his vote against the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson). Throughout the biography, Fessenden's character is complicated. Fessenden is proud, but not militant, reserved, but not without an opinion. He is a centrist and yet controversial.

In a war where themes are largely centered on race and emancipation, Fessenden is unimpressive. The author makes clear that Fessenden's lukewarm stance on race and emancipation may have prevented him from being the romanticized senator of the Civil War that popular culture could admire. In regard to race, Fessenden is neither a hero nor a villain. His ability to remain neutral is part nature and part nurture. Cook states he had no black friends and rarely thought of black people in general, and he claims Fessenden's pragmatist model allowed him to put party politics above racial lines. Fessenden, like many northerners was antislavery, but not an abolitionist, and definitely not a Radical Republican. He opposed slavery not on the grounds of humanity but in regard to "the question of political power" (103). He is remarkable in his ability to restore financial stability to the North during a time of crisis; however, in terms of racial reconciliation and Reconstruction, he does not do enough. Cook is right to suggest that had Fessenden pushed his political weight behind the politics of the radicals, Reconstruction would have looked differently. Because the author carefully builds the case to readers that Fessenden was formidable throughout his political career, his assertion of the potential Fessenden had to change historical outcomes proves to be one of his strongest arguments.

Cook argues, "If we want to make sense of the deepest crisis ever faced by the United States, it is time we came to a better understanding of men like Fessenden—however difficult it may be to incorporate them into a usable past for the multicultural present" (3-4). In this aspect, Cook is absolutely right. The dramatic stories of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner do not reflect the complete historical context that presents political figures as centrists or moderates. It is indeed refreshing to read about a politician who championed what he thought was right, regardless of how it fit into a Radical Republican ideology. With the biography of Fessenden, I hope scholars will begin to examine not only extraordinary figures such as Abraham Lincoln or John Brown, but in terms of the large diversity of political ideology represented within the Civil War. Fessenden represents the quintessential northern elite who tried his best to see it both ways. I would argue that the strength of Cook's work lies in his ability to show how Fessenden developed as a politician and maintained a level of consistency in a world rapidly changing around him. While it may take more than Cook's work to situate Fessenden's significance, this book...