Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism, 1843-1852 (review)

166CIVIL WAR HISTORY sions that determined them, were matters of political expediency. We find him wandering through the maelstrom of parties of his era, from Whig to Free Soiler to Know Nothing to Republican, always keeping his lines of communication open and always sensitive to the main chance. Even his well known work on the coming of the Civil War, the History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, was written, at least in part, to assure Wilson of his proper place in the annals of the antislavery movement. Certainly he cannot be taken seriously as a leader of the political antislavery movement or as a Radical Republican. Rather, his career is a distressing example of the effect of the success credo in its nineteenth century milieu. If one of the problems with this biography has to do with the limitations imposed by the subject, Henry Wilson might have emerged as more of a human being had the author been freer in his interpretations, had he been somewhat less scrupulous in presenting a balanced study. After the introductory paragraphs we are told almost nothing about Wilson's personal life until the concluding pages of the book, when we are informed of the death of his charming wife and only son, in 1870 and 1866. It appears that, in hot pursuit of political success, Wilson outrageously neglected his wife and only child. These facets of his life and character must have had their effect on Wilson's public life and deserve to be explored more thoroughly. It is difficult for this reviewer to see how Abbott arrives at his conclusion , that ". . . Henry Wilson never came to regard election to political office, and the victories of his political party, as ends in themselves. Political power to him provided the means whereby he could implement moral principles." The material presented in this rather scholarly work leads him to quite a different conclusion. Patrick W. Riddleberger Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism, 1843-1852. By Robert F. Dalzell, Jr. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Pp. xv, 363. $8.95.) The author's original intention to make Daniel Webster's rhetoric of nationalism the subject of his study gave way to a somewhat broader design, as he came to realize that the rhetoric was very closely related to the day-to-day events of the statesman's political career. In this context Webster is to be seen neither as the disinterested Defender of the Constitution nor as an ambitious politician in quest of the Presidency at any cost. Webster evinced rather the pattern of "interested" statesmanship , wherein the requirements for political preferment and his ideology seemed happily to coincide. Central in his ideology was the belief that a "viable balance" of sections, interests, and rights consti- BOOK REVIEWS167 tuted the "very essence" of the American nation (xii). With such a view Webster might very well hope to protect the interests of his own section while he made a broad appeal to all other parts of the country. Unhappily for his political ambition, however, the static quality in his ideology did not enable him to deal effectively with the sectional conflict of interests over slavery. When the Wilmot Proviso precipitated the bitter debate over slavery in the territories to be acquired from Mexico, Webster could only invoke the good of the existing balance in behalf of his policy for making no acquisitions at all. Again he hoped the Compromise of 1850 would, by removing the divisive issue of slavery , bring back the old harmony of interests; but this time "the conscience of New England got left out of the balance." (xi). The best parts of the volume under review deal with these two events; for they bring in to clear focus the political calculations of Webster and the relevance, as he saw it, of his deeply held convictions about national balance. Though often tedious and unrelated to the ideology of nationalism, other parts dealing with the nuts and bolts of politics are also of value. Extensive use of manuscript materials turns up new information on Webster's politically ambiguous position in Tyler's Cabinet and the part...