Oliver P. Morton and the Politics of the Civil War and Reconstruction by A. James Fuller (review)

A. James Fuller's biography succeeds admirably in resurrecting the leading role played by Indiana's Oliver P. Morton in the politics of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In the process, he provides the balanced and insightful appraisal that has largely eluded earlier historians who have often cast Morton as either hero or villain. Fuller recognizes but contextualizes Morton's failings and ultimately paints a favorable portrait of the Hoosier as "remarkably consistent" in adhering to an ideology of "freedom, Union, power, and party" (p. xxiv). Fuller's core historiographical purpose is to reinterpret Morton but, along the way, he also builds on Michael S. Green's interpretation of Republican Party ideology and complements recent work by William C. Harris and Stephen D. Engle in identifying governors as Lincoln's essential partners in the success of wartime federalism.

Opening chapters interrogate Morton's early life and career to identify the roots of his key personality traits and later ideological positions, but the biography really comes into its own with the election of 1860 and Morton's ascension to the governorship. Indiana has memorialized Morton as "the Great War Governor" for his success in mobilizing the state and providing for soldiers and their dependents, but this record came with considerable controversy (p. xv). Although he embraced bipartisanship initially, when Democrats won control of Indiana's legislature in 1862 Morton refused to allow his opponents to impede his management of the war effort. Instead, he initiated a twenty-two-month period of personal rule during which he refused to call the Democratic legislature into session and kept the state functioning by securing numerous private loans, including from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. In 1864, Morton convened a series of treason trials that tarnished his Democratic opponents and helped secure his own reelection. Fuller handles these extraordinary events adroitly, acknowledging elements of truth in traditional critiques of Morton as a dictatorial and paranoid partisan, while simultaneously documenting the real threats—including an assassination attempt against the governor—posed by some anti-war, Democratic "Copperheads."

Despite suffering a stroke in late 1865 that left him frequently unable to walk, Morton maintained his prodigious energy, and the second half of the book analyzes his historically neglected career as a leading Radical Republican throughout Reconstruction. Although initially supportive of Andrew Johnson's leniency toward the former Confederate states, the unrepentant actions of southern whites—encouraged by northern Democratic sympathizers—soon convinced Morton that only full political and civic equality for African Americans could secure the Union, emancipation, and the future of the Republican Party. Morton became a leading exponent of "waving the bloody shirt" as he stumped for Republican candidates nationwide, arguing that the old wartime alliance of northern Copperheads and southern Democrats continued to threaten the nation. Political cartoons punctuate this section and powerfully illustrate how commentators frequently portrayed Morton as the power behind President Grant's throne and considered him a serious contender for the White House in 1876. A satisfying final chapter demonstrates how public celebrations of Morton since his death have reflected the changing prominence of different Civil War memory traditions and the desire, until very recently, to forget Reconstruction entirely.

Fuller has written a rich and rewarding study of a remarkable individual but, like many political biographies, there is an ambivalence in the overall interpretation of his subject as ideologically consistent. Contemporaries assailed Morton for performing volte-faces on emancipation, black suffrage, the currency question, and other issues. Fuller rejects this characterization and often succeeds in arguing that Morton's commitment to freedom, nation, or party allowed these policy reversals to still chime with his underlying principles. Even so, Fuller often accompanies this explanation with astute descriptions of the Hoosier as a "realistic and practical" politician who had the capacity for a "genuine changing of his mind" (pp. 354, 292). These...