The Editorial Revolution, Virginia, and the Coming of the Civil War: A Review Essay

THE EDITORIAL REVOLUTION, VIRGINIA, AND THE COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR: A Review Essay William W. Freehling When final judgment is pronounced on American historical writing in the 1945-1970 period, the highest accords may not be awarded to those historians who have written reinterpretations of our past. The "consensus" historians who reigned supreme so long are coming to seem, even to themselves, a bit archaic. The long crusades for respectability fought by practitioners of new historical techniques—literary criticism, status analysis, computers—have triumphed. But none of the new technicians has ventured to construct a new synthesis of our history. In the long run, the greater accomplishment of the profession since the Second World War may lie in another realm—the success of the creative historical editor. Scholars such as Julian Boyd, Lyman Butterfield , and Leonard Labaree have made important source materials not only universally available but also more understandable by their innovative editorial methods. Their spirit has infected historians working in more traditional ways. Significantly, perhaps the most exciting recent reinterpretation of a major American event—Bernard Bailyn's reexamination of the Revolution—is itself an introduction to a massive editorial project. Perhaps the most important historian of the era, Perry Miller, made some of his greatest contributions as a superb editor of anthologies. The appearance of new documentary collections has changed forever the contours of early American history. But this editorial development has not yet revolutionized the study of the coming of the Civil War. New editors of some of the great figures—Calhoun, Davis, Clay, and so on—are bogged down in their subjects' earlier careers. No published source on America in the 1850's compares to Bailyn's pamphlets on the Revolution or Miller's anthology of the Transcendentalists. No Civil War scholar is even planning a project comparable to Linda De Pauw's edition of the Debates of the First Federal Congress. In view of such comparative poverty, the unheralded, almost unnoticed , appearance of George Reese's four-volume edition of the complete , ' crucial, Virginia Secession Convention proceedings and debates of 1861 is an important event for those working in the middle period.1 1 Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861. Vol. I, February 13— 64 Reese's exciting volumes demonstrate that publication of major documents can change our understanding of pre-Civil War America as much as it has already changed our view of the Age of Jefferson. The Reese edition demands an inquiry into just why other editors of mid-nineteenth century Americana, who are trying to work in Julian Boyd's spirit and have large funds at their disposal, have thus far failed to provide anything as significant as these debates. Finally, the newly published debates invite a fresh look at Virginia's intriguing role in the coming of the Civil War. O O O In certain ways, Reese's volumes are very much in the Boyd editorial tradition. Reese republishes the complete proceedings and debates, with great accuracy, in a big, easy-to-read, handsome edition. The volumes cost too much for most scholars to buy, but they are indispensable for any research library. The inevitably low sales meant that publication had to be subsidized—in this case, by the Virginia state government . This, in turn, meant that Reese's editorial apparatus had to be limited, not by his own vision, but rather by the degree of largesse of the supporting institution. Unfortunately, as Reese makes clear in his introduction, the financial limits were severe, so crippling that the editor was forced to violate the Boyd tradition in ways which will infuriate scholars using the debates . Reese's introduction is bare-bones; there is no index; explanatory notes are almost nonexistent; and no attempt is made to recount what was transpiring in secret—particularly in the crucial Committee of Twenty-One, which set the tone of the Convention. The only concession to new standards of editorial annotation is a brief, day-by-day synopsis of the debates at the beginning of each volume. This material, while helpful, does not negate the overall pattern of a work which has all of Boyd's completeness in printing the important sources...