The Lincoln Persuasion: Remaking American Liberalism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS249 various ways the American victory. Jackson and McClellan occupy center stage, with others making brief appearances at the expense of the hapless Mexicans. It is almost to be expected that the book begins to lose cohesiveness thereafter . Careers took various turns as officers went on a variety of duties. Waugh had to pick and choose which ones to follow. His selections will not win unanimous approbation, although most of them are solid. Since the author's roots are in the soil of "Stonewall" Jackson's hometown , that graduate of 1846 dominates the book. His every military move receives close attention—perhaps too close for the book's framework. Why it was necessary to describe the May 23, 1862, "battle" of Front Royal so minutely, while completing overlooking the 1862 Peninsular campaign of George McClellan, is a mystery. Another instance of imbalance is with the earlier discussion of events at Fort Sumter. The detail given to that episode hardly seems justified, when the only 1846 West Pointer there was Truman Seymour. His activities were minor. The above is not so much criticism as it is a warning that those West Point classmates do not receive equal shares of attention by any means. Indeed (as is so often the case in historical reporting), some of the thirty-four graduates whom Waugh selected are on the list because they left written records of their actions. Save for the West Point years, Waugh relied on printed sources—especially primary material in such periodicals as the Southern Historical Society Papers. His choices of "eyewitness" accounts were not always the best. John Esten Cooke and Henry Kyd Douglas, neither of whom ever let truth stand in the way ofa good story, should always be read with extreme caution. One major factual slip mars the work. Waugh devoted a chapter to the saga of Jackson in the spring of 1861 squeezing the timetable of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad until he could trap all ofthe trains in the area of Harpers Ferry. This is a staple of Civil War History. It is also without factual foundation. A regular use of "couldn't," "didn't," and other contractions is a detraction that seriously weakens the text as a whole. A sprinkling of dangling participles adds to the damage. The publisher should have known better. Waugh has introduced a new kind of Civil War history here. It is a blend of anecdote and analysis from thirty-four different directions. That should give it appeal for almost any Civil War student. James I. Robertson, Jr. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University The Lincoln Persuasion: Remaking American Liberalism. By J. David Greenstone . (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1993. Pp. xxxiii, 312. $24.95.) David Greenstone, a University ofChicago political scientist, left behind this incomplete manuscript when he died in 1990. His students have skillfully and 250CIVIL WAR HISTORY lovingly brought it to publication. Challenging Hartz's liberal consensus notion , Greenstone rearranges familiar details about antebellum politics in order to reformulate our understanding of the nature of the liberal tradition particularly as it confronted slavery. His main points are two: that there were three liberal traditions in America. The original one, which Hartz described, with its belief in individual rights, private property, and government by popular consent, was largely uncontested. But "a pervasively liberal culture need not be monolithically consensual" (50). In the years after the revolutionary generation , it diverged into two distinct, but each still liberal, casts of mind. One, which Greenstone labels humanist liberalism, represented here by William Leggett, Stephen A. Douglas, and, most of all, Martin Van Buren, was secular and rational. It stressed a utilitarian calculus, the satisfaction and aggregation of individual preferences, and sought mechanisms, such as popular sovereignty and especially the political party, to achieve such satisfaction . The second cast of mind was religiously rooted. Reform liberalism, represented here by John Quincy Adams (chapters on others in this tradition —Daniel Webster, Lydia Child and Frederick Douglass—were never written), articulated, in addition, a moral imperative, a duty to help people develop and enhance their capacities beyond their appetites. "Whereas humanist liberals stress[ed] consent to institutions that resolve[d] disputes over preferences, reform liberals emphasize...