Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years, 1832-1865 (review)

74CIVIL WAR HISTORY to raise $ 1 5,000 from private sources. Safire suggested that this money may have been used, not for the public good, but to pay for debts amassed by Mrs. Lincoln. The author noted that back in 1860 Lincoln deposited $500 to his own bank account the day after Weed visited him in Springfield. Safire criticized historians for not probing these two actions which might have involved Lincoln in some shady deals. Concerning emancipation, Safire's Lincoln knew that he "could fool some ofthe people some ofthe time."As Safire saw it, Lincoln deliberately held out to worried Northern whites his "mirage called colonization" to get them to accept his plan to free slaves under Confederate control. He supported the colonization scheme although he was well aware that it could never become a reality. In brief, Safire's Lincoln was devious even as he was heroic. Civil War historians will enjoy reading this novel, and ifthey refer to the notes in the "Underbook,"they may find in it some challenges to long held views. Joseph George, Jr. Villanova University Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years, 18321865 . By John d'Entremont. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. xiv, 282. $29.95.) The pre-Civil War South was a land of contrasts, and few Southerners personified that better than Moncure Conway. To the manor born, he repudiated the manorial tradition; seeped in patriarchal ideals, he championed the emancipation of slaves and the equality ofwomen. John d'Entremont tackles the formidable task of explaining this Southern anomaly. He divides the study into three parts, each containingthree chapters. The first explores two foundations for Conway's abolitionism: the positive influence of warm, compassionate women (especially his mother and two of his aunts), and the negative influence of his cold, authoritarian father. Conway sought independence, both from his father's domination and the arrogance of Southern aristocrats. He quit the law for the ministry, then (largely under the literary spell of Emerson) forsook Methodism for Unitarianism . Meanwhile, he grew progressively disenchanted with slavery. The second part treats Conway's experience at Harvard Divinity School and his firsthand exposure to New England's literary and abolitionist leaders . After graduation, he assumed a ministerial position in Washington, D.C, where the pulpit provided a forum for his iconoclastic views. By the early 1 850s, Conway's break with slavery (and the world of his father) was virtually complete. BOOK REVIEWS75 In part three, d'Entremont treats Conway's trauma duringthe Civil War. Shortly after President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation , Conway mysteriously left for England. In d'Entremont's view, Conway had become troubled to the point ofdistraction (a pattern ofbehavior he had exhibited before). Unable to bear the strain between his love for the South and his hatred for its ways, and between his delight at the destruction of slavery and his horror at the bloody toll, he fled. D'Entremont plans another volume on Conway's twenty-year sojourn in England. For the most part, d'Entremont's analysis is subtle, thorough, and balanced . He generally avoids casting Conway's life in an Oedipal framework, though the evidence is tempting. He may be faulted, however, for his treatment ofthe role ofwomen in Conway's emotional makeup. By acceptingat face value common nineteenth-century stereotypes about alleged differences between women and men (and between white men and the "feminine " races)—arguing that the images governed people's behaviorand were not simply caricatures—he flouts the past generation's scholarship on these vexed questions. Purists might question aspects of his style, such as the liberties he sometimes takes with conventional sentence structure. His decision not to provide chapter titles, letting section titles alone provide conceptual guidelines , is also troubling. Finally, his occasional comments about research triumphs and failures, though happily confined to the notes, seem petty and should have been omitted. These criticisms aside, this will doubtless stand as the definitive biography of Conway. Readers may at times disagree with d'Entremont, but they must applaud his careful treatment of a life so deeply interwoven with the crucial issues of nineteenth-century America. Joseph P. Reidy Howard University GildedAge Cato...