Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 (review)

Book Reviews439 or fought at all. Nor is it to say that American voters, in a national referendum, might not have bought Crittenden's package. Nor is it to deny Crittenden's own integrity and loyalty. Every well-informed historian knows that after the war came he endured the political agonies of a Kentucky Unionist, which were considerable, and almost every Civil War buff is aware that he experienced the personal anguish of having one son serve as a Union general and another as a Confederate general. Yet the fact remains that Crittenden preferred a proslavery settlement of the issues of 1861 to the breakup of the Union. Historians are entitled to the same preference, but they should say so clearly. The choices in 1861 were not disunion, war, or compromise—at least not the Crittenden compromise. They were disunion, war, or a sweeping proslavery change in the machinery of self-government which would forever deny the power of public decision-making on a mighty national problem. Now historians, as it happens, like to be on the side of the angels. They are in favor of peace, a united nation, and democracy. (Some of them are also interested in the rights of Negroes in the white man's America of 1861. Crittenden paid no attention whatever to this subject, and I shall assume that this is why Mr. Kirwan is equally silent on it.) History professors can enjoy the luxury of simultaneously supporting all these sanctities. Americans in the great secession winter were not so lucky. Of the triopeace , Union, self-government—one had to be scuttled. Crittenden's candidate was the last-named. His Great Compromise looked appealing, but was a gold brick. Lincoln took a good look and refused to buy. It is sad to see that after a century some scholars are not his equal in appraising the merchandise. Bernard A. Weisberger University of Rochester Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865. By William E. Parrish. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1963, Pp. xvi, 242. $5.50.) Professor Parrish has produced an excellent study of a complicated political and military segment of the Civil War. The ordeal of Missouri during the Rebellion has been examined before, and capably, but diis volume appears to be the best summary to date. There is no easy way to simplify the Missouri story, but the author has presented it in an understandable and quite readable form. This is the history of a state at war, much of the time with itself, but it is also more than that. It is the personal account of a man burdened with more problems than any one man should expect or deserve. Parrish's narrative of Hamilton R. Gamble and his efforts to keep Missouri in the Union is the best and most interesting feature of the book. Gamble was subjected to unusual pressures by conservatives, by radicals, and by the army. He was forced to steer a perilous course, but he did so successfully. Governor Gamble was a respected St. Louis attorney, a former state 440CI VIL WAR HIS TOR ? supreme court justice who had upheld Dred Scott's claim to freedom, and was active in Missouri politics when the Confederacy came into being. He was an intelligent participant in the discussions relative to Missouri and the Union, and was the logical choice to head the state's extra-legal provisional government, organized in the summer of 1861. This extemporized body was a necessity, since most of the duly-elected state officials (led by the pro-Secession governor, Claiborne Jackson) had fled the capital. Under Gamble's leadership the provisional government not only kept Missouri with the North, but kept her people from destroying themselves. Professor Parrish has critically examined the roles of other important individuals, and some of them emerge more realistically than from older accounts. For example, the student of the Civil War is likely to remember General Nathaniel Lyon as the martyred hero of Wilson's Creek but is aware not at all of that earlier Nathaniel Lyon—the bumbling Federal commander in St. Louis. Fremont, Harney, Halleck, Schofield, Curtis, and Rosecrans are all prominent characters in this study, and...