The Political Crisis of the 1850s, and: Division and Reunion: America 1848-1877 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Political Crisis of the 1850s. By Michael F. Holt. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978. Pp. xix, 259. $10.95.) Division and Reunion: America 1848-1877. By Ludwell H. Johnson. (New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1978. Pp. xvii, 269. $11.95.) These two books, one in a series edited by Robert A. Divine and the other in a series edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher, are two strikingly different works on the era of the Civil War. Holt's book, a study of political parties in the 1850's, is original in outlook, sophisticated in methodology, and a prolonged argumentation of the author's thesis. Johnson's book, a comprehensive overview of three decades, is neoConfederate in outlook, conventional in methodology, and a prolonged argumentation of the author's thesis. Michael Holt's work is a welcome accession to the literature on the coming of the Civil War. It is fresh in its investigations, brilliant in its insights, and original in its thesis. The research is distinguished not merely by wide reading in published and manuscript materials, but also by use of studies of state politics and of unpublished student papers. Holt reduces previous major interpretations of the political developments between 1845 and 1860 to two, each "concerned with the breakdown of the old party system and the rise of the Republicans" (p. 9). One interpretation emphasizes sectionalism, of which Eric Foner is an exemplar, and the other emphasizes ethnocultural factors, of which Holt himself has been an examplar. Neither of those interpretations, he says, explains why and how the old two-party system worked. In place of these he presents his two-pronged argument that consensus, not conflict, killed the Second Party System and a loss of faith in politicians, a desire for reform, and a related deep-seated concern for republicanism combined to produce the Civil War. His argument, of course, flies in the face of much previous research, and pertinaciously he sets out to try to persuade readers thathe has found the answer to the question, why the Civil War came in April, 1861. To the center of Holt's argument is his view that a two-party system needs conflict to survive and that a federal structure, national and state, operating in North and South, enabled the Second Party System to offer alternatives and conflict to voters. One of the freshest portions of his book is his discussion of how the two parties, normally dependent upon exploiting opposing economic viewpoints, arrived at a consensus by 1853, thereby destroying voters' faith that the system offered alternative ways to preserve republicanism. With faith in the old system gone, with fear for the future of republicanism, voters in 268 BOOK REVIEWS269 the North turned to a new party, significantly named Republican, to save them from the slave power, while voters in the South turned to the Democratic party, increasingly within their section stressing Southern Rights. Secession was motivated by a concern to save republicanvalues from Northern tyranny. All this is presented with a discernment and erudition too particularized to summarize in a short review. Scholars will note Holt's apostasy from faith in the ethnocultural interpretation and his embrace of "both the ideological and behavioral approaches" (p. x). Some will question his general premises, and others may question his particular claims that the Second Party System "functioned superbly for twenty years," that the nation as a whole, largely independently of slavery issues, lost faith in the old party system and again largely independently of slavery issues became apprehensive about republicanism, and that "ambitious politicians . . . shape[d] the developments and enlist[ed] the passions that led to Civil War" (p. 138). Indeed, it may seem to some readers that his argument has gone full circle, returning to older interpretations, when the author writes that if the institution of black slavery had not existed, "there probably would never have been a war" (p. 258). But, much to his credit, Michael F. Holt learnedly and vigorously argues his case. No less vigorous are the views of Ludwell H. Johnson. In his book he has rehabilitated Charles A. Beard and William A. Dunning, finding economic motives mightily at work...