Political Abolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861 (review)

6oCIVIL WAR HISTORY Fate ofLiberty, 1991), and Philip S. Paludan (The Presidency ofAbraham Lincoln , 1995). Nevertheless, the question of whether, or how, the Civil War represented a revolutionary moment in American history is one that continues to attract interest in the classroom and from academic journals. This collection only reconfirms that BeIz remains one ofthe most important and provocative voices in that debate. Matthew Pinsker Lancaster, Pennsylvania PoliticalAbolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861. By Michael J. McManus. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 288. $39.00.) This book has three goals: to downplay the importance of ethnic and religious issues and attitudes in the formation of the Republican party; to demonstrate that abolitionism, moral antipathy toward slavery, and opposition to Southern political power were not as incompatible (and not as easily separable) as most historians have assumed; and to show that states rights opposition to slavery deserves a more important place in accounts of the Republicans' rise to power than historians have accorded it. On one level, McManus succeeds. He proves that the sectional issue, not opposition to Catholic immigrants, fueled Wisconsin politics in the 1850s. The anti-immigrant Know Nothing organization (especially on the state level) was nearly stillborn. He shows that in the mid and late 1 850s the case ofAbelman v. Booth harnessed a states rights component of the Republican party that found expression in attempts to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act as well as in a serious factional struggle for control of the party. Whereas some have seen this states rights sentiment as emanating from the ranks of Democrats who abandoned their party when it became evident that Southerners were determined to spread slavery against thewishes ofterritorial majorities, McManus persuasively shows that, at least in Wisconsin, many a former Whig hoisted the banner ofnullification. He also reasonably argues that on the broadest level, the ultimate goal of abolitionists and Republicans was the same: the extinction of slavery. To that end, he takes issue with Michael F. Holt and William E. Gienapp, who have argued that Republicans politicized antislavery mainly to win elections and that to accomplish that goal they emphasized Southern slaveholders' threat to the political freedom of Northern whites—not the uplifting of black people. To McManus this distinction is too tidy. Yes, he concedes, Republicans were not, as a whole, racial egalitarians, and they did try to use the small-r republican idiom to win electoral support. But Republicans were less racist (as evident by the majorities of them that supported black suffrage in referenda) than Democrats , and Republicans could not have won votes attacking the "Slave Power" if slavery itself was not a hot-button issue. And yet McManus is not entirely persuasive. The emphasis on states rights many have been purely a product of local circumstances. Opposition to the BOOK REVIEWS6l Fugitive Slave Act did not have the political repercussions elsewhere that it had in Wisconsin. And in the end, as McManus points out, the Badger State ultimately favored unionist over states rights doctrines. In one passage (on page 190) McManus inadvertently reveals that he may have allowed his opposition to a coercive federal government today affect his judgment of the past. Although McManus provides us with ecological regression estimates of voter movement between elections, he does not use the method to highlight the demographic aspects of Wisconsin's party loyalties. His empirical observations suggest that ethnic and religious identities had much to do with the levels of support won by the Republicans and Democrats. Given his opposition to ethnocultural interpretations, McManus should have confronted this evidence more systematically. Finally, McManus and those who downplay the differences between Republicans and abolitionists must address the fact that the fight over the territorial issue was more symbolic than substantive. There were very few slaves in the territories in the 1850s, and just as Southern whites demanded that the "right" to bring slaves into territories that could not sustain slavery be preserved, Northerners demanded that the "right" of a Northern majority to prevent slavery's unlikely expansion be respected. The Republican platforms of 1856 and i860 made no mention of repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, or...