The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (review)

180CIVIL WAR history envious his old infantry comrades would have been of Forrest's war— faced as they were not with Pompeii or Loch Lomond for tourist attractions, but rather that endless round ofAmerican sites, from Bloody Pond at Shiloh to the Crater at Petersburg. Benjamin Franklin Cooling U.S. Army Military History Institute The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate. By Allan G. Bogue. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981. Pp. 369. $28.50.) The Earnest Men reports the results of sustained "inquiry into the nature of radicalism in the Civil War Senate" (p. 9). The core of the study is analysis of theroll-callvotingrecord, butextensive contextis suppliedin evaluation of biographical, institutional, and ideological elements. Professor Bogue makes explicit his belief that "quantitative research canbe most effective when combined with research in so-called literary sources . . ." (p. 16). His presentation brilliantly demonstrates that he has acted on his beliefs. The formal analyses, however much enriched by qualitative contextual presentations, are offeredwiththeexplicitness necessary for replication and with complete candidness in acknowledging the elements of weakness or ambiguity in the findings. An author less committed to the canons ofgood social science history would have relegated some of the more extensive caveats to the appendixes. The finished work is as much a guide to importantresearch methods and a surpassing example of scrupulous reporting as it is a penetrating analysis of a dominant concept in Civil War history. Civil War senators are placed on a radical-moderate continuum by cumulative scale analysis of votes on southern issues during the second session ofthe Thirty-seventh Senate. This is not a searchingofall roll-call evidence for some nonjudgmental extraction of clusters of senators on some content dimension. The southern issues, incorporating eightyseven judgmentally selected roll calls, are postulated as the basis for ranking the senators. A dominant scale incorporating fifty-two of those roll calls, supplementedbyseveral limited scales, establishes the ranking of Republicans from radical to moderate, with border-state senators and Democrats falling farther toward a conservative pole. The consistency of this ranking is tested through the four succeeding sessions of the Civil War Senate with mixed results, painstakingly displayed. Satisfied with the rankings as proof of sustained and ingrained distinctions along the dimension, the author then tests essentially every other roll-call issue against the radical-moderate dichotomy among Republicans for evidence of other subjects that yield a useful degree of antagonism between the radical half and the moderate half of the Republicans. book reviews181 Apparently determined to subject his conclusions to the most rigorous test, the author rejects an index of antagonism betweenextreme thirds in favor of the less decisive measure of antagonism between halves. From thoroughgoing analysis of debates as well as ofpersonal and institutional considerations, Bogue seeks to make explicit the content of radical positions and their rationales and, further, to assess the underlying dimensions. He agrees that the charge of being vindictives has some justification in describing radicals as men who sought not only victory but some measure of revenge. Less acceptance of racial prejudice so prevalent in the North and hence greater confidence in the capacities of black people seems to help define radicalism. Preferences for national power as opposed to state rights, together with some disdain for constitutional separation of powers within the federal government , emerge as hallmarks of radicalism. Less regard for congressional precedents as well as for the constraints many moderates found in the Constitution is consistently a radical position. Bogue, in seeking to discern an even more fundamental dimension, suggests "that perhaps there was a broader continuum of attitude . . . during, and before, the Civil War, of which the poles may be termed modernizinginstrumental on the one hand and traditional-formal on the other, and that is this structure of attitude that we detect—imperfectly because it was, after all, imperfect—when we make distinctions between radicals and nonradicals" (pp. 311-12). What made one senator radical and another moderate is addressed extensively but without decisive results. Many social, cultural, and career considerations offer tantalizing clues. Some other possible explanations, including an eastern versus western distinction or a simplistic economic rivalry, are systematically considered but in most respects rejected. Eventually, we seem...