Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the Eve of the Civil War (review)

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464civil war history Some conceive of their lives as part of history, dramatic history beginning in their own time. Even the most sophisticated do not think in the manner of a twentieth-century woman like Pearl Buck, who reflects while hiding from a mob of Chinese Communists that she cannot escape "history"—referring to all that Europeans have done in Asia for generations. No passage in Heroines of Dixie questions the institution of slavery (Constance Cary's anti-slavery views are not mentioned). But there are imaginative and thoughtful women in this book, women who use their minds honestly. Mary Ann Loughborough wonders at the ladies who all cried, "Oh, never surrender!" for, she says, "After the experience of the night [under fire at Vicksburg], I really could not tell what . . . my opinions were." They read and reflect. Sara Rice Pryor recalls a friend who taught her to live without provisions, and who "kept me a living soul' in other and higher ways. She reckoned intellectual ability the greatest of God's gifts. . . . Her talk was a tonic to me." Thus the book reminds us that these women were not intellectually fragile. There is, at least in the published memoirs, still more in this vein that might have been included. Much of Mrs. Chesnut is here, but not her reflections about "the social evil" and the meaning of the slave women she sees on the block, her criticisms of Mrs. Stowe, or her observations of the effect upon men and women of absolute power or perfect beauty. We miss Sarah Morgan's expressed need to relieve her feelings by speculating privately upon politics, although she dislikes women who rant on the subject in public. We do not see how Eliza Andrews , bitter and suffering in the last war-torn days of Georgia, can generalize from what she sees and so maintain a kind of perspective. Imagination and thought were in the experience of these women, and if they were heroic helped to sustain them in their heroism. Caroline G. Mercer Poughkeepsie, New York. Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the Eve of the Civil War. By Robert W. Johannsen. (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1955. Pp. xiii, 240. $5.00.) when discussing the sectional crisis that was developing during the 1850's, historians inevitably consider the problems presented by the western territories. Initiated by the enigmatic David Wilmot, punctuated by the oratory of the compromisers of 1850, their accounts usually reach a bloodv climax south of the Kaw and subside while the authors gather strength to describe the holocaust ahead. With this book Robert Johannsen has greatly improved the perspective in the American historians' picture of territorial issues during the turbulent fifties by analyzing the impact of sectional controversy in the nation on the new territories of the Pacific Northwest. Nor, as he shows, did the lines of influence run only toward the west; the long debate over the Oregon organic act in Congress , for instance, contributed to sectional distrust generally and Breckenridge's running mate of 1860 was Joseph Lane, senator from the new state of Oregon. Book Reviews465 The author's study is thoughtful, clearly written and reflects broad and thorough research. After a discussion of the land and the people of the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Johannsen describes the relation of the Oregon territory bill to the Wilmot proviso controversy, the attitude of the western settlers toward slavery (they were in general both anti-slavery and anti-Negro) , the development of the Democratic and ultimately the Republican parties, the schism in the former and the relation of this split to the strife between Buchanan and Douglas, the alignment of parties and groups in 1860 and finally the reaction of the Pacific Northwest to the secession crisis. He has placed major emphasis upon events in the more populous Oregon but discusses developments in Washington territory as well. One eminent historian of the slavery controversy has criticized the author in an earlier review for expecting too much knowledge of national figures and events from his public. On the other hand, the reader interested primarily in the territorial process could conceivably complain that he would have liked...