From: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Subject: causes of Civil War -- books 'n stuff
Reply-To: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:59:49 GMT

Hello all, 
	Returning from semi-lurker status after a long delve through
other eras...

I am wading my way through some of the literature in regards to the 
coming of the war, and would like to start a discussion on various
approaches to it in print.  Please respond to any or all parts
with comments, corrections, additional sources, rabid flaming attacks, 
or whatever.  Sorry about the typos and lack of mastery of the English language
 (I learned it when I was really young--you know how that is ;-} )--I did not
 have time to edit it again...

Alan Nevins' multivolume _Ordeal of Union_
	How has this aged? does it say more about the Civil War or about 
the '50s mindset of the author? Is it too blatantly northern in its 
sympathies to be read alone?  Did the war transform a disorganized
nation into an industrial machine?  Does Nevin's come off as a New England
abolitionist born too late?  Were Northern ands Southern
sections making divergent cultures as they expanded into the West?
Had leaders acted differently in the many crises, would the war, as 
Nevins asserts, have been avoided? He says Webster, Clay, Douglas and 
Fillmore were competent in their framing of the 1850 compromise, but that that
political competency failed in Douglas' abandonment of the Comp. of 1850, 
and in  Pierce for his failure as Pres. to strongly oppose Douglas'
rash initiatives, and Bucahanan...was the US form
of gov't to blame for putting small men in large positions?

Eric Foner _Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men_
	Anti slavery was one of the few thing that all Republicans 
agreed on according to Foner, and Lincoln was able, through charisma 
and leadership suited to the historical moment, able to unite a Northern 
constituency around opposition to slavery and its expansion.  While this 
may not havew been the immediate cause of war without Lincoln, it was a 
necessary one.  Lincoln's election formed for Foner the moment of
praxis, when ideology meets action...Were the Republicans formed around
a belief in the positive moral and economic advantages of free labor? 
Or were nativism and racism more important to uniting the party, as 
other historians have argued?

James Mcpherson _Ordeal By Fire_
	social, political, and economic developments from 1800 on...
a modern liberal approach--was the North's modernization and the South's 
resistance to same a major factor in the coming of the war?  Or is it
a device, vague and abstract, which allows Mcpherson to employ various 
monographs in a synthesis which would otherwise crumble?  Was New England the 
source of a type of Weberian Modernizing impulse, of which the Repub.
Party became the expression?  Was what happened with slavery a genuine 
revolution, more than the North wanted or expected?

Joel Silbey _The Patisan Imperative:Dynamics of Am Pol's bef. the CW_
	Democrats and Whigs were seeking national constituencies
 but had to appeal to local-interested audiences of voters.  Following
Lee Benson's beliefs, Sibley declared that only when the sectional interests
began to split along ethno-cultural lines did secession occur.  Slavery as an 
issue, he believes, was played down until this split.  Class was a minor factor
in the face of almost tribal party loyalty.  Slavery and expansion were 
also no where near as important as scholars have said in the past.  Demos were
not pro-slavery hesays, but simply resistant to imposing moral positions on 
their constituency.  Those who bolted for Rep. did so b/c of nativism, not
b/c of anti-slavery sentiments.  Calhoun could not rally Southern Demos 
around him either, says Sibley until Southerners began to see
intrusive New England morality as as much a threat as anti-slavery.  
Hisa ethnocultural approach borders on a tribal, ethnocultural loyalty 
to the Benson school of voting pattern analysis in some respects.  
Is he able to get at causes, or is he simply over-interpreting statistical
correlations?  Does he discredit equally important economic voting factors? For 
example, religiouis ties often reflected class relations (as opposed 
to interests).

David Potter's posthumous _Impending Crisis_
--a return to the old school of Drummond and Rhodes fundamentalism, 
but minus the claim that war was inevitable, and with the addition that 
the trouble was over expansion of slavery b/c north's respect for 
constiotution precluded attacks on the southern institution as it
stood until the Taney court's decision 
on Dredd Scott set loose a constitutional base for moral opposition of existing
southern slavery to hang on.
	at Acquisition of TX and admission of CA & NM into Union, US 
seemed cohesive, but political problems of expansion, slavery, and
sectionalismn proved too much for the nation's leadership between, 1848 and 
1862.  He sees little pre-ocupation with slavery and no sense of impending war.
CW was not inevetible (Does that make it "evetible" ?-)), and Potter
does not take it as a foregone concluion in the lminds of his actors.
He posits  the paradoxical developments of nationalism and 
sectionalism, and posits slavery as the issue
which undrlay all sectional/national aspects, with politics substituing 
sectional stereotypes for realities in ways wh. exacerbated dificulties btw 
N & S, creating real sectional differences from abstractions.  N & S
he claims had many national ties and commonalities--they were not, he asserts, 
distinctively differnt civilizations by the out break of the CW.  Southern
nationalism was really resentment of north and fear that northern
propaganda and abolitionist literaturee would result in slave insurrections
--it was about slavery in the south, not its expansion in the West. Southerners were
united by fear rather than distinctiver southern ID.
Was Nativism gas important as slavery? 
Was Lincoln's failure to campaign in the south, although politically 
the right thing to do, a mistake in that it scaredf southerners into thinking 
he was something far more radical than he really was?
Was the Whig collapse a result of the rise of northern nativism?
was a Southern distrinctiveness a result rather than a cause of the war, as 
Potter states? (Compare to Wyatt Brown's tract on Southern Honor")
--Why did long-standing problems of slavery erupt in the 1850s and 60s?

comments?  disagreements?  Mistakes in my interp?  (please, nothing about
 the typos, though), books not covered?  --I know one ommision is Stampp's
Causes of the Civil War_, biut I know nothing about it...
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa