Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession
There seems to be a fair amount written about the time period from the 1860 election up to the firing on Fort Sumter, but it is usually from the Southern vantage covering primarily secession or it focuses on the few weeks from the inaugural to the firing on Fort Sumter. Russell McClintock’s Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession ably fills this gap by providing the Northern viewpoint. McClintock follows the various political factions in the North from Lincoln’s election through his call for volunteers following the firing on Fort Sumter. He does a good job of explaining how the various Republican factions came together to win the election and then how Lincoln had to hold them together until Inauguration Day when he could wield firmer control. Lincoln ran the very real risk of elements of his party working with the Democrats for peace at any cost, which he certainly did not want. He desired peace but there were certain things he would not waver on, primarily an agreement that would make it appear he had to concede things in order to be inaugurated. In Lincoln’s view the Republicans had won an election fairly and if they now had to concede anything to be sworn in it would be a backward step for democracy. The unhappy minority could not be allowed to dictate how things would happen; that would completely undermine the foundations of representative democracy. This position prevented most forms of compromise from happening at all. Another reason was because the Democrats, mostly Southern Democrats, were not happy with a promise of an extension of the Missouri Compromise Line. They wanted a much harsher fugitive slave law, or they wanted slavery protected in the Constitution, or some other promise that the Republicans could not agree to without abandoning the platform they ran on. So how did Lincoln keep all these factions in line well enough that nothing was agreed upon that he could not live with? Through old-fashioned party politics. He pressured state party leaders to keep their senators and representatives in line. He kept quiet enough that no one really knew what he was going to do, so they stuck to the party line to keep their own prospects bright. An example is that Lincoln kept most of his cabinet choices quiet much longer than he needed to, partly because the various factions would not step out of line thinking it might cost their part of the party a choice cabinet post when, often, the decision was already made. When the state party leader told the factions what was expected of them they mainly behaved because they didn’t want to mess up their groups’ or their own prospects. McClintock gives President James Buchanan some praise, mainly by pointing out that it really was a very tricky situation. If Lincoln wanted to wait until he was president to make things happen, to work on a peaceful compromise, there really was little Buchanan could do with the Congress he faced at the time. There is one place that McClintock points out a weak side of Buchanan, but doesn’t skewer him as savagely as he could have. Buchanan’s attorney general, Jeremiah S. Black, told Buchanan that he could not fill the vacant posts in South Carolina, such as customs collector, unless local federal officers requested assistance. This is just nonsense. Basically Black was saying that since all of South Carolina’s federal employees quit there could be no federal presence there anymore. If one man had stayed on the job then he could have asked for help, but if he didn’t there would be no new appointees sent to South Carolina. In reality these men just switched their allegiance to South Carolina. The duties were still collected, but the money went directly to the state and not the federal government. Black envisioned a federal government so weak that any state at any time could just have its federal employees resign en masse and the federal government could do nothing about it. Buchanan accepted this opinion. McClintock should have skewered this opinion as idiotic. He doesn’t do that, but he puts the facts out there well enough that the rest of us can see how silly Black’s opinion was and think less of Buchanan for accepting such an opinion. Reviewer: Nicholas Kurtz graduated from the University of Colorado-Denver in 2001 with a B.A. in history. He loves wandering battlefields and is an aspiring author. Although he finds all aspects of the war interesting his primary interest is the Western Theater.
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Index, 388 pp., 2008. University of North Carolina Press, 116 S. Boundary St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514, $35 plus shipping.