Editor's Overview

Our December issue takes us back to the decade prior to the outbreak of war, with two fresh biographical perspectives that provide a deeper window into the political culture of American society. Famous for its platform's ringing denunciation of polygamy as one of the "twin relics of barbarism," the Republican Party took a strong stand against Mormonism. The Democratic Party was more divided. Wedded to a policy of popular sovereignty, traditionally protective of individual liberty, and hostile to moral reform movements, Democrats would seem to offer the Mormons in Utah Territory the local control to practice their religion freely. Delana Eckels, however, was President James Buchanan's nominee as chief justice of Utah Territory. As Nicole Etcheson argues, Eckels was a fierce defender of popular sovereignty and generally opposed to moral reform. But he was also implacably hostile to the Mormon practice of polygamy. To explore the internal divisions within the Democratic Party between maintenance of the law and federal authority and popular sovereignty, Etcheson's article examines Eckels's role during the Utah War.

In December 1849, as the debate in Congress over the Compromise of 1850 was about to begin, the Senate confronted the seemingly innocent question of granting Irish temperance reformer Father Theobald Mathew the honor of sitting on the floor of the Senate. As historian Stephen Maizlish argues, the sectionally fraught atmosphere of the impending Compromise debate made the dispute over the seating of Father Mathew a heated rehearsal for the larger encounter to come. The seating controversy involved questions about the role of political motives in the sectional dispute, divisions over the place of sectionalism in American politics, conflicts over the nature of the Union and the meaning of state equality, differences over abolitionist tactics, arguments over the morality of slavery, and revelations of southern ambivalence over the institution that gave definition to their section and structure to their lives. Such leading midcentury political personalities as William Seward, John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Jefferson Davis participated in the debate over Father Mathew, and their confrontation foreshadowed not only the impending debate over the Compromise but the intensifying disputes of the coming decade that would determine the fate of the Union.

Reviews in this edition of Civil War History explore a wide variety of biographical approaches, from the life of Lincoln and George Armstrong Custer to some very popular figures in the Confederacy, Braxton Bragg and John Wilkes Booth. Additionally, other titles explore the environment, slavery, and Vicksburg. We are also pleased to present a review of our very own book review editor's collection of letters that explore the lives of an Irish couple and the pressing challenges the war brought to their lives in Connecticut.