We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861 - Hardcover

Cooper, William J. , Jr.

 
9781400042005: We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1400042003 ISBN 13: 9781400042005
Verlag: KNOPF, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

In this carefully researched book William J. Cooper gives us a fresh perspective on the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, during which all efforts to avoid or impede secession and prevent war failed. Here is the story of the men whose decisions and actions during the crisis of the Union resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War.

Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War.

All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others—northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike—strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.

We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and did: the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their actions: Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William J. Cooper is a Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Southern Historical Association. He was born in Kingstree, South Carolina, and received his A.B. from Princeton and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the LSU faculty since 1968 and is the author of The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877–1890; The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856; Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860; Jefferson Davis, American; Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era; and coauthor of The American South: A History. He lives in Baton Rouge.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

PREFACE

The cataclysm of the Civil War is the defining moment in the history of the United States. At the cost of more than 750,000 dead and that many more wounded, it guaranteed the preservation of the Union and abolished the in- stitution of racial slavery. Even with that frightful human toll, the outcome made it a good war for the United States. These generalizations are well known and shared by most Americans of our time.

Yet the men who made the fateful decisions leading to that massive conflict did not share our perspective. The great historian David M. Potter commented on the difficulty, but necessity, of understanding the per- spective of those we study. “The supreme task of the historian,” he wrote, “and the one of most superlative difficulty, is to see the past through the imperfect eyes of those who lived it and not with his own omniscient twenty-twenty vision.” Recognizing the arduousness of his assigned task, Potter concluded, “I am not suggesting that any of us can really do this, but only that it is what we must attempt.”

In this book I have tried to adhere to Potter’s charge. In the months between the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 and the outbreak of hostilities in April 1861, no one knew whether war would occur, or if it did, no one could foresee the price, course, or result of that war. Even those who did expect armed conflict, a few excitedly, more fearfully, had no conception of its magnitude.

Slavery and the political issues surrounding it occupy a central place in my account. Yes, the war ended slavery, and to most Americans of today it was fought for that cause. The war was not begun to eradicate slavery, however. Even the leading Republican policymakers understood that a war started to kill slavery could not command united northern support and could quite possibly destroy their party.

This judgment was based on the reality that Americans, Republicans included, overwhelmingly believed that the Constitution protected slav- ery in the states where it existed. Moreover, except in extreme antislavery circles, owning slaves did not make a person a moral ogre or persona non grata in civil society. Additionally, the racial character of American slavery was of cardinal importance. In the mid-nineteenth century almost all white Americans and Western Europeans believed in the supremacy of the white race. I will not keep pointing out that this outlook is different from mine and that of our own era. I should not need to.

Before the Civil War, white southerners constantly talked about liberty—its preciousness and their commitment to it. They perceived no contradiction between their faith in liberty and the existence of slavery. From at least the period of the American Revolution, white southerners defined their liberty, in part, as their right to own slaves and to decide the fate of the institution without any outside interference. In their view, living in a slave society made them no less American than their fellow citizens in the free states. While such a concept is foreign to our thinking, it was fun- damental to white southerners until 1865.

Writing a book about the coming of the Civil War, even one so chrono- logically restricted as mine, I place myself in a long line of historians who have grappled with the causes of the war. I owe an enormous debt to my predecessors, who have illuminated so many facets of the sectional struggle from abolition to secession. Answering the question of why the war came is not my aim. My goal is not so grand. I want to tell the story of those whose action and inaction brought the country to the precipice and finally over it.

I concentrate on the five months between Lincoln’s election and the commencement of fighting. During those weeks the attention of Americans became increasingly riveted on the great crisis of the Union. The southern states threatened to break up the Union. The immediate crucial issue was the place of slavery in the national territories; the longer-term question concerned the character of the Union and who would wield power in it.

At the outset, many Americans assumed that a political compromise fashioned in Congress would settle the dispute. Compromising sectional disagreements had been a hallmark of the nation since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The precedent set there had been followed on several volatile occasions during the succeeding three-quarters of a century.

But not all Americans wanted another compromise. In the South, radi- cal secessionists saw this moment, the election of a northern president head- ing a northern party by northern voters, as their opportunity to disrupt the Union. The North had its own segment that spurned any compromise with the South. These vigorous partisans of the triumphant Republican party were determined to celebrate their victory without any deal with an alarmed, uneasy South.

Between these extremes, Americans in both sections ardently desired to reach an equitable settlement between North and South. Although this pro-compromise sentiment could be found in the Deep South and in the Republican party, it flourished among northern Democrats and in the Upper South and Border. A fact often overlooked is that pro-compromise forces included men both antislavery and proslavery.

My book focuses on why the pro-compromise legions lost, or why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. In the past few years, several scholars have investigated different parts of this story, most notably the success of the secessionists and the dynamics within the Republican party. But no one has treated North and South, Republican and Democrat, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives in the same place. I have done that.


PROLOGUE


“Is This Not a Remarkable Spectacle?”

In the early evening of Sunday, March 3, 1861, the white-headed gentleman stood once more among his fellow senators. Of medium height, spare and erect, with a face deeply lined, almost craggy, John J. Crittenden commanded attention. With a long commitment to his coun- try and an unsurpassed reputation for integrity, he was foremost a man of character. But Crittenden’s audience consisted of more than his Senate col- leagues. Spectators jammed the galleries long before he spoke at 7:00 p.m. In this assembly sat Abraham Lincoln, to be inaugurated president the next day.

For the past three months, during the entire span of the Second Session of the 36th Congress, Senator Crittenden had striven to get his colleagues to address the crisis that convulsed the nation. The Union he cherished was coming apart. Since December 1860, seven southern states, from South Carolina west to Texas, had severed their relations with the United States. In mid-February these seceders had created a new polity, the Confederate States of America. Furthermore, turmoil and uncertainty about their future course dominated discussion in most of the remaining eight slave states. Recognizing his inability thus far to secure any congressional action to prevent this dismemberment, Crittenden on that Sunday made a final plea for his beloved Union.

John Jordan Crittenden is not a name remembered today. But in 1860 and 1861 he was a consequential man, with admirers in both North and South. A native Kentuckian, born in 1786 and trained in the law, he had spent most of his life serving his state and nation in various offices: state legislator, governor, twice a cabinet officer, and on four separate occasionsa United States senator. Since the 1830s he had always been a Whig, the party formed to oppose Andrew Jackson’s Democratic party. The Whigs generally believed in active government to facilitate the material growth and cultural progress of the country. Moreover, Crittenden...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
KNOPF
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1400042003
ISBN 13 
9781400042005
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
332
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

3 Queen Caroline Street Hammersmith
London
W6 9PE
Vereinigtes Königreich
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9781400076239: We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861 (Vintage Civil War Library)

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  1400076234 ISBN 13:  9781400076239
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013
Softcover