In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

300CIVIL WAB HISTOBT the Radicals. The major part of Williams' article consists of a definition and description of the Radicals, centering around the issue of slavery: the Radicals were that faction of the Republican party whose "program was to destroy slavery as part of the war process, to destroy it suddenly and, if necessary, violently, to destroy it, if not in revenge, with passion." Individual Radicals, in Williams' description, possessed a distinctive outlook and temperament which set them apart from other persons of their era. They were "doctrinaire and dogmatic," they "spoke a revolutionary vocabulary," they "employed on occasion revolutionary techniques," and many of them had "acquired revolutionary temperaments" which they displayed by seeking to establish "the primacy of Congress in the governmental system." Lincoln is described as now working with the Republican Radicals, and now with the Republican Conservatives. It would be an error, Williams concludes, "as we are in Professor Donald's debt for telling us, to make too much out of the conflict in the Republican party over slavery. It would be a greater error to dismiss this unique episode and its unique issue as something normal or average and to treat it on the level of ordinary politics." In a note added apparently after the lectures were delivered, Donald writes: "As is indicated by Professor Williams' contribution to the present volume ... he appears to have accepted the more important of my criticisms, and our points of view are not now very different." There is no similar note by Williams, and in comparing the two essays most readers will probably find many more differences than similarities, as indicated in the summaries above. Despite their differences in interpretation, however, both Donald and Williams urge the need for definition of who were the Radicals, and this urging would seem to offer the best guide for future research. In particular, the reviewer thinks that future studies should seek to identify Radicals by name. If my count is correct thirteen individuals are so identified in Williams ' essay and twelve in Donald's essay, with eight of the individuals being described as Radicals in both essays. Until it is determined which and how many individuals can be identified as Radicals, discussions of Radicalism will necessarily have a disembodied and somewhat theoretical cast. A 1963 doctoral dissertation by Glenn M. Linden analyzes roll-call votes in Congress during the war years and identifies by name seventy congressmen as Radical Republicans who voted differently from their Republican colleagues on issues pertaining to slavery and to the Confederacy. Further studies like Linden's should provide evidence for evaluating the contrasting interpretations of Professors Donald and Williams. Thomas J. Pressly University of Washington The Triumph of Militant Republicanism: A Study of Pennsylvania and Presidential Politics, 1860-1872. By Erwin Stanley Bradley. (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964. Pp. 467. $8.50.) In the fifteen years following the election of 1860 there was an intense BOOK BEVIEWS301 internal conflict for control of the triumphant Republican party. Various forces in the conglomeration of antipathies that had come together in the fifties fought for the right to direct the party's future course. The development and nature of this conflict has been, on the national level at least a repeated theme of American historians. The outstanding virtue of Professor Bradley's work is that he investigates the era within one key state. Such local studies, when properly done, can fill in the great void in our knowledge which becomes apparent once we get past the drama of Johnson's impeachment and the roles played by outstanding national leaders to try to understand the forces underlying the surface conflict Unfortunately Mr. Bradley's book does not enlighten us much. This is traditional political history: Bradley's focus is on the smoke-filled rooms in which candidateswerechosen by cynical bosses, the maneuvering of different personal factions as they jockeyed for control of the spoils, and which cliques won or lost, particularly in the battle for party nominations. So much is this the focus that in the chapter entitled "The Crisis" (of 1861), what appears to be the center of concern is only whether or not Simon Cameron would enter Lincoln's...

pdf

Share