Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom by Graham A. Peck

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom by Graham A. Peck Evan C. Rothera (bio) Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom. By Graham A. Peck. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. 280. Cloth, $34.95.) For Graham A. Peck, Abraham Lincoln's election as president in 1860 is "perhaps the single-most vital story about freedom's preservation in America" (2). In order to explain the rise and triumph of the Republican Party and antislavery politics, Peck focuses on antebellum Illinois as a state that offers a unique view of a national conflict between slavery and freedom. In his focus on this single state, Peck claims to offer a sweeping reinterpretation of the rise of antislavery politics in the early United States. Scholars of the subject, however, likely will find Peck's study a well-written account of the triumph of antislavery nationalism if not a cutting-edge monograph that reshapes the field. Peck posits that Illinois "reproduced the nation's problem with slavery in miniature" (17). From the beginning, however, Peck overemphasizes the love of Illinois settlers for liberty. Illinois voters famously defeated a proslavery constitutional convention referendum in 1824. However, despite 57 percent of the voters rejecting the referendum, victory was not easy. One wonders whether Peck allows genuine antislavery reformers like Edward Coles to stand in for the average Illinoisan. Some Illinoisans considered slavery a threat to their freedom and embraced an incipient free-soil critique of slavery. However, antislavery sentiment had shallow roots. A shift of fewer than 850 votes would have returned a proslavery result. This is salient because Peck attributes the victory to a last-minute surge in migration by settlers to Northern Illinois. The "love of liberty" among settlers was, at best, a superficial love, as Elijah P. Lovejoy discovered (18). Moving into the Second Party System, Peck contends that Illinois [End Page 602] Democratic politicians' "ardent advocacy of national expansion helped rekindle the nation's battle over freedom" (54). While Illinois Democrats supported Mr. Polk's War, many resented Polk for compromising on Oregon. Peck utilizes John Wentworth to highlight the growing anti-southern sentiments of northern Illinois Democrats. While this was true, it took Wentworth, and others, a long time to leave the Democratic Party. One famous northern Illinois Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, never did. Peck makes a particularly problematic assertion that Illinois Democrats shared a "preference for freedom, even if they rarely expressed antislavery sentiment" (69). How he can say this with a straight face is puzzling. In claiming that the Free Soil Party "commenced a struggle over the meaning of freedom in the nation," he undercuts his argument about a lengthier politics of slavery and overlooks the fact that the struggle over the meaning of freedom began long before 1848 (71). Peck also contradicts himself when he argues that Illinois Democrats "had little choice but to challenge the emerging northern understanding of freedom" after the rise of the Free Soil Party (72). In fact, Illinois Democrats had a choice: fusion with Free Soilers. Leading Democrat Martin Van Buren himself chose cooperation. If anything, Illinois Democrats validated the strength of party loyalties and how people thought about other issues besides slavery. Peck concludes that the presidential election of 1848 demonstrated that the Democrats "would have a difficult time resolving the antagonism between slavery and freedom" (95). This difficulty was not great enough to prevent them from winning in 1852. Peck brings Lincoln and Douglas into focus in the final three chapters. In his telling, the crisis of Union in 1850 made Douglas believe expansion was the best issue to unify the Democratic Party. His tolerance of slavery led Douglas to risk the possibility of slavery's expansion and caused him to gamble that antislavery sentiment was superficial. However, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, his signature piece of legislation, destroyed popular sovereignty's free-soil reputation and sparked a fierce backlash among many northerners. The emergence of the Republican Party, in addition, forced Douglas into a defensive position. He had to defend popular sovereignty, which was now irrevocably linked to slavery, and navigate unceasing proslavery demands from the southern wing...