Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession (Civil War America)
The American Civil War often seems inevitable in retrospect, but to historians who examine the secession crisis of 1860–61, it does not seem quite so obvious. Succeeding works such as And the War Came, by Kenneth M. Stampp (1950), and Days of Defiance, by Maury Klein (1997), McClintock’s contribution assesses the impact in the North of South Carolina’s belligerence following Lincoln’s election. Through the lens of politics, McClintock analyzes how the factions composing the Republican and Democratic parties reacted, and how partisan newspaper editors attempted to influence these factions. From this bottom-up viewpoint, McClintock usefully changes the usual focus from Lincoln to a northern public worried about the possibility of war but uncertain how to avert it. Its fears consolidated into camps of hard-liners and conciliators, argues McClintock, who recounts the failures of compromise formulas that left Republicans opposed to concessions (Lincoln) with the upper hand over would-be deal cutters (William Seward). Intended to redress an oversight in scholarship, McClintock’s study should find favor with general readers interested in the Civil War’s immediate origin. --Gilbert Taylor