Why the Civil War Came (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Why the Civil War Came. Edited by Gabor S. Boritt. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii, 254. $30.00 cloth; $13.95 paper.) If Civil War causation was, as Donald Fehrenbacher once observed, the most hotly debated topic in American historiography during the 1950s, this volume, the fifth in a series of Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books, admirably demonstrates that no topic is ever exhausted so long as able historians are willing to reexamine old questions from fresh perspectives. If scholars writing in the shadow of World War II were determined to prove that the carnage was avoidable, the seven essays presented here instead collectively suggest that the war was all but unavoidable. Space limitations prevent a detailed discussion ofeach essay—all of which are original in their own way— but two are small gems. Although his essay hardly explains why the war came, DavidW. Blight demonstrates that Frederick Douglass was far from alone among black Americans in declaring slavery the "primal cause" of the conflict. Eschewing conventional, if simplistic, dichotomies of northern black abolitionists and demoralized plantation slaves, Blight suggests that the entire black community , freeandbond, together produced an expectant culture based upon eternal struggle. "Slaves had rejected Justice Taney's opinion long before he wrote it," he argues. For decades they had planned forthe day ofjubilee, and now that it was upon them, no conservative Congress or timid president could prevent them from transforming the war for union into a revolutionary conflict for black liberation. Political historians traditionally draft elite women into their narratives only after Fort Sumter, typically in the romantic roles of nurse or spy. Glenna Matthews, however, establishes beyond any doubt that many female activists of the late antebellum period came to condone violence as the only plausible method of ending the greater cruelties of the peculiar institution. While public men in the North often sought to conciliate their Southern brethren, once-moderate female activists had their resolve hardened by decades ofenduring flying bottles, rotten eggs, and epithets of "Jezebel." By the end ofthe 1 850s, Matthews writes, with perhaps a touch of exaggeration, "hundreds of thousands of women had absorbed at least part of the lesson about the necessity for action." The remaining five essays are more traditional, but no less thoughtful and carefully crafted. Charles Royster's unsettling essay suggests that after decades ofrhetorical strife, angry majorities in both sections embraced war with as much I38CIVIL WAR HISTORY relief as enthusiasm. In contrast, editor Gabor Borrit argues that Abraham Lincoln blindly stumbled toward mass slaughter in the mistaken belief that slavery could be marginalized without resort to arms; even readers who find Borrit's depiction of a naive Lincoln unpersuasive, as does this reviewer, will find much in this wide-ranging essay to ponder. William Gienapp explains why the globe's most advanced democracy failed to preserve the peace, andWilliamW. Freehling similarly suggests that war came because of the political peculiarities of a slave regime unlike any other in the Americas. My caveats are few. Notes belong at the foot of the page, and a work of history, especially one designed in part for classroom use, should have an index! Douglas R. Egerton Le Moyne College Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South. By DouglasAmbrose. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 226. $45.00.) Perhaps only Henry Hughes, the relatively obscure "sociologist" from Port Gibson, Mississippi, could have rivaled George Fitzhugh's status as America's most inventive and outrageous defender of slavery. This youngest of the lot of Southern "controversialists" was something of a caricature of several betterknown proslavery writers. His megalomania, distinguished by inklings of messianic mission, surpassed that of James Henry Hammond, while his wracking doubts and acute sense ofisolation made George Frederick Holmes and Beverley Tucker seem distinctly upbeat and clubby in comparison. As for his social vision , he was as contemptuous of Yankees as Edmund Ruffin, more chilling in his prescription for race relations than even Josiah Nott, and every bit as intent on fundamentally reforming Southern slavery as James Henley Thornwell. DouglasAmbrose adds his carefully drawn portrait ofHughes's life and work to an ever-expanding gallery of...