Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett by Matthew Mason

Abstract

Reviewed by: Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett by Matthew Mason Jared Peatman Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett. By Matthew Mason. Civil War America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 434. $39.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-2860-8.) Ask any American in 1860 who was the fiercest proponent of Unionism, and they likely would have answered Edward Everett. Yet today "even well-informed general readers have only a vague recollection of Everett as the stodgy orator who rambled on for hours at Gettysburg before Abraham Lincoln took the stage," despite Everett's previous roles as a congressman, governor of Massachusetts, foreign minister to Great Britain, president of Harvard University, secretary of state, senator, and vice presidential candidate (p. 2). With Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett, Matthew Mason brings Everett back into focus with the fullest political biography of Everett since 1925. Mason notes that the current historiography of the secession crisis focuses on just two groups: southern sectionalists versus northern sectionalists. Including Unionists like Everett offers a much-needed corrective: "The successes, failures, and evolution of his vision of how vexing political questions, including—but far from limited to—slavery, should interact with the sacred Union provide an unusually valuable window on the ebbs and flows of Unionism as a political force across this long period" (p. 2). Everett's Unionism began early. At age sixteen he lamented that July 4 celebrations did too little to increase patriotism. As a congressman, Everett's [End Page 972] "priorities were the solidification of national unity and the advancement of the Whig agenda of improvement" (p. 60). Ironically, he was frequently derided as a southern sympathizer by the abolitionists and as an abolitionist by the southern sectionalists. While Everett's thinking on slavery evolved—from accepting a biblical defense of the institution in the 1820s to calling it "a social, political, and moral evil" by the late 1830s—he never lost focus on Unionism as his guiding principle (p. 112). That many shared his sentiments is evinced by the string of public offices he held. Everett often advanced Unionism by invoking shared history. He spoke at battle of Bunker Hill commemorations, worked with James Madison to debunk the legitimacy of nullification, and helped make Daniel Webster's papers publicly available. In 1855 Everett developed an oration on "The Character of Washington" (p. 1). Soon, Everett was speaking around the country in a twin effort to raise money for the purchase and preservation of Mount Vernon and to help promote Unionism. These speeches turned out to be tremendously important, Mason argues, for "[t]he passionate connection to Union that prompted loyal citizens' enormous and sustained wartime sacrifices. … was in large part the result of the cultural work done by Everett and his fellow laborers in the antebellum nationalist vineyard" (p. 10). Mason moves rather quickly through Everett's reluctant acceptance of the second spot on the Constitutional Union Party ticket in 1860; the author posits that the party's focus on Unionism forced the Republicans to nominate the moderate Abraham Lincoln—rather than an avowed abolitionist—or face losing more votes. With the outbreak of war, Everett continued to promote Unionism and came to embrace abolition, both for its own sake and to help remove the major conflict driving the Union apart. Mason positions Everett's speech at Gettysburg as the culmination of a lifetime's thinking about and promoting Unionism. Mason presents a likable and compelling Edward Everett. Mason's argument that the politics of the era would be better understood as "a three-way contest between Northern sectionalists, Southern sectionalists, and committed Unionists" is convincing and helps reframe events before and during the war (p. 9). Given the importance of the two Gettysburg addresses, readers may wish Mason had spent more time on that subject, but this small quibble does not detract from the overall strength of this insightful and well-written work. Jared Peatman Lincoln Leadership Institute Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association