Antislavery and Disunion, 1858-1861: Studies in the Rhetoric of Compromise and Conflict (review)

BOOK REVIEWS101 University of North Carolina, Jones has neglected some major sources. The best Civil War naval manuscript collection—the Fox Papers at the New York Historical Society—has been ignored, and some recent secondary sources have been neglected (Ludwell Johnson's excellent Red River Campaign, for example ). Finally, die index is inadequate. Limited to proper nouns, except for "blockade," it misses many names mentioned in die text (Braxton Bragg, for instance) and some names listed appear on more pages than the index indicates . The Civil War at Sea is not, as die dust jacket claims, the "definitive history of naval operations during the Civil War." If "professionals" have given Jones no "quarter" and have granted him no "mercy," as he complains in his preface, they have had ample reason. Ari Hoogenboom Pennsylvania State University Antislavery and Disunion, 1858-1861: Studies in the Rhetoric of Compromise and Conflict. Edited by J. Jeffery Auer. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963. Pp. xii, 427. $6.00. ) This collection of twenty-three essays was prepared under the auspices of die Speech Association of America in a collaborative effort to investigate "die nature of public address on antislavery and disunion and . . . die conditions which led to die disruption of public discussion and die substitution for it of armed conflict." Confined to "public discussion," each article deals with a significant or representative speech—or sometimes a group of speeches—delivered during the gathering sectional crisis between September , 1858, and March, 1861. It is neither possible nor desirable in a brief review to list all the contributors and their subjects. Though readers of Civil War History will readily identify such names as Kennedi M. Stampp, William B. Hesseltine, and Larry Gara, most of the writers are professionally trained in speech, not history, and die editor, J. Jeffrey Auer, is chairman of the department of speech and Üieater at Indiana University. Some of die essays deal widi speeches as familiar as Lincoln's First Inaugural, but others resurrect almost forgotten orations like Benjamin Morgan Palmer's violenüy proslavery Thanksgiving sermon of 1860. The importance of die speeches here discussed is equally varied; one essay deals with the debates in the Washington Peace Conference of 1861, while anotiier analyzes tiiose of die Gnotíiautü Literary Society of Knox College. Necessarily the essays vary in value. Some of the topics—like "Ford Douglass 's Fourth of July Oration, 1860" and "The Annual Meeting of die Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, I860"—are so limited diat not even skillful handling can make much of them, but, to counterbalance these, other contributors have dealt with such major occasions as Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict" address. Some of die topics lead only to negative conclusions; tiius, Mary W. Graham concludes her discussion of "The Lyceum Movement and Sectional Controversy" by noting that sectional issues were not much debated in 102CIVIL WA R HISTORY lyceums. But otiiers, like Ralph Richardson's careful assessment of Jefferson Davis' apparendy inconsistent speeches in 1858 and Lionel Crocker's close study of Stephen A. Douglas' Soutiiern campaign in 1860, lead to more interesting interpretations. Although most of die contributors are newcomers to the field of history, they have handled die took of dieir adopted discipline admirably. All the essays are fair-minded and objective; all are based upon considerable research in the primary, and frequently in the manuscript, sources. There is hardly one of these articles which would not make a creditable showing if published in a historical journal. Indeed, one's only serious complaint about Mr. Auer's compilation derives from a certain uneasy feeling that Antishvery and Disunion challenges traditional historical methods all too little. The professors of speech contributing to this volume differ hardly at all from the professional historians here represented in either die questions they ask or the answers they suggest. These essays contain surprisingly little on die techniques of nineteendi century oratory; they do not give much close attention to the structure of the orations here discussed or much detailed analysis of the rhetoric. They seem to prove that teachers of speech can write good, conventional history rather than to demonstrate that the historian has much to learn from a sister discipline...