Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS267 Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860. The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, No. 16. Edited by Stephen E. Maizlich and John J. Kushma. Introduction by Thomas J. Pressly. (College Station , Texas: Published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A & M University Press, 1982. Pp. 229. $19.50.) These five essays are united in questioning historical stereotypes, in a commitment to the "new" political history, and by a common ideology, that of ethnocultural history. The essays are of two kinds. Three narrowly-focused essays are led off by Michael F. Holt's analysis of the Whigs in the election of 1848. Prior to nominating Zachary Taylor, Whig leaders at both national and state levels had tried a variety of policy issues to defeat the Democrats, and saw all of them fail. Only then did the Whigs turn to Taylor to attract voters, both traditional and outside party ranks. In an excellent essay on the Know-Nothing movement in the antebellum North, Stephen Maizlich shows that nativist and Republican ideology had much in common. Using Ohio as an example, he shows that political nativism was neither an abberation nor an attempt to avoid the real issues of the day, as earlier historians have argued. Rather, in Ohio hostility to "Romanism" can only be understood as part of hostility to "slavery." Joel Silbey's essay attempts to extend the ethnocultural conclusions about 1850s politics into an examination of the South's reaction to Lincoln's election. Through the Southern Democratic prism, Republicans appeared as bigoted Puritan dictators of cultural uniformity, who were prepared to act on their convictions. Fear of Republican determination to act drove Southerners to act also, and secede. The first two essays are broader quantitative studies. Using carefully explained estimates of voting population and turnout, and correlating these with immigrant population and foreign-born voting, William E. Gienapp convincingly refutes Philip Converse's charge that nineteenthcentury voting rates were artificially inflated by fraudulent immigrant voting. Gienapp then depicts the pervasiveness of politics in Northern culture from 1840 to 1860. Thomas B. Alexander's study of presidential elections from Harrison to Lincoln uses bivariate regression analysis to show the remarkable strength of party identification and stability of party voting. Other quantitative historians would challenge Alexander's technique and his handling of data. To the reader's benefit, Alexander has embodied a discussion of these disagreements in the text of his essay. Voters consistently divided into two groups, the Democrats and the antiDemocrats . Given the fact of stability, Alexander argues, election outcomes were determined by small groups of issue-oriented "independents " whose identification with one or the other major group marked the difference between victory or defeat. Finally, there is Thomas J. Pressly's delightful introduction, pointing out not only disagreements between the essays but also Pressly's dis- 268CIVIL WAR HISTORY agreements with the conclusions reached. Pressly's introduction should be read bothbefore and afterperusingthe otheressays, as it offers both an intriguing guide to what is to come and a useful summary of where one has been. One cannot expect in multiauthored essays the internal consistency of argument or conclusion in a scholarly monograph. Newness and challenge can be expected. This volume contains no reprise ofearlierworks; the authors challenge each other as well as other scholars of the antebellum period. David E. Meerse State University College, Fredonia Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880. Edited by Milton Meltzer and Patricia Holland. Associate editor, Francine Krasno. (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1982. Pp. xviii, 583. $35.00.) One of nineteenth-century America's most important women of letters and reformers was Lydia Maria Child. In a career spanning over sixty years she authored many books on such diverse topics as household management (The Frugal Housewife, 1829), world religions (Progress of Religious Ideas, 1855), and slavery (An Appeal in Favor of that Chss of Americans Called Africans, 1833). She was also the founder and editor of Juvenile MisceUany and editor of the National Anti-Shvery Standard. Throughout her life, Child was a popular and influential author ; her writings on behalf of the slave brought people like Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner into the antislavery movement. She was an...