The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-Election and the End of Slavery (review)

74CIVIL WAR HISTORY and patronage there are problems in organization that will frustrate readers. In the chapter on Chase and the Free-Soil coaUtion, for example, Niven portrays Chase in mid-1848 attempting to postpone a Liberty party nomination of John P. Hale for president that occurred the previous fall. There are also a few factual errors. For instance, Joshua R. Giddings voted for Martin Van Buren in 1 848, not Zachary Taylor as Niven contends. Overall Niven presents a coherent account of the Ufe of an extremely influential American. But he does not provide a new interpretation of Chase. Like others before him, Niven explains Chase's career as an uneven combination of, on the one hand, moral commitment and, on the other, poUtical expediency based on overweening ambition. Niven develops Chase's beUef in Jacksonian equal right principles and his appUcation of them to issues of racial justice and poUtical economy. But in Niven's account it is Chase's ambition and egotism— what he calls Chase's "dark side" (429, 432)—that predominate. At one point Niven goes so far as to suggest that Chase's poUtical ambition made him insensitive to the deaths of a wife and child. It may be that it is impossible both to know and like Chase. But it also may be that historians will have to utilize more sophisticated psychological, cultural, and intellectual approaches in order to understand more fully what his Ufe meant in the context ofreform and war in mid-nineteenth century America. For example, while he frequently refers to Chase's piety, Niven misses a chance to investigate Chase's reUgious beUefs as a means of understanding his views on abolitionism, poUtics, war, and race relations. Niven must be complimented for producing the fullest account of Chase's life yet in existence. But much remains to be done in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of this extremely important individual. Stanley Harrold South CaroUna State University The Jewel ofLiberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-Election and the End ofSlavery. By David E. Long. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1994. Pp. xxvi, 368. $24.95·) The Jewel ofLiberty offers a narrative of events leading up to the presidential election of 1864, the first book-length treatment since WiUiam Frank Zornow's Lincoln & the Party Divided, published in 1954. Zornow's work depicted the election in revisionist tones, with Radical Republicans gaining a stranglehold on Congress as Lincoln was reelected and thus placing themselves to fix their industrial capitalist agenda on the country for a generation. Republicans would counter Democratic resistance to this agenda by waving the bloody shirt and reaping a harvest of gain from the old wartime allegations of Democratic disloyalty. BOOK REVIEWS75 Since Zornow wrote, revisionism has fallen, and the triumph of the new outlook seems complete in The Jewel ofLiberty; in fact, David E. Long's book might serve as an ideal type ofthe antirevisionist position. Democrats no longer constitute a loyal opposition maligned and slandered by Republican allegations of treason. "Most Regular Democrats," Long states, "had before 1864 ceased to support the war because it was being prosecuted by a Republican administration and Congress that considered emancipation and conscription necessary to secure unconditional surrender" (265). And Lincoln's victory is hailed as the most important election result in American history, guaranteeing the freedom of the black race, saving the Union, and making possible the survival ofdemocracy. While the outlook on Civil War poUtical history was changing, another revolution occurred, a methodological one. Borrowing tools and insights from political science, historians altered their approach to poUtical history; they began to utiUze voting analysis and critical elections theory and to stress the nature of party systems. Of these innovations, 77ie Jewel ofLiberty is innocent, with the result that it embraces methods identical to Zornow's—reading the letters and speeches of the party elite and examining newspapers—to stitch together a headUne narrative history of the mid-Civil War years through election day 1864. The overall result is conclusions completely contrary to Zornow's but without presenting much in the way of new evidence. The description of Democratic failure to exploit the Union losses at Cold Harbor is especially interesting...