Paul D. Escott. The Worst Passions of Human Nature: White Supremacy in the Civil War North.

Abstract

In The Worst Passions of Human Nature, distinguished historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction Paul D. Escott argues cogently and convincingly that while the conflict resulted in the end of slavery and progressive changes that had seemed all but impossible to most observers before the transformative events of the war, the national commitment to white supremacy was so powerful that this limited the potential for change and progress even during this seemingly revolutionary period. While the Democratic party remained united in its commitment to white racial superiority and racist attacks on African Americans and attempts to protect or promote their civil rights, the Republican party’s newfound commitment to emancipation during the war did not bring about widespread support for full equality of the races among either the party’s leaders or rank-and-file voters. Escott carefully examines the northern press in the form of newspapers, journals, and books, as well as other primary sources, providing a very broad evidentiary base for his claims. His essential argument is at odds with some modern historiography that sees the Civil War as a high point for Americans’ embrace of the fundamental national ideals of freedom and equality. Escott, like Gary Gallagher in The Union War (2011), sees white northerners during the war as embracing, or at least accepting, emancipation as a war measure fit and necessary to restore the Union, as Abraham Lincoln explained it. He provides strong evidence, however, that the northern press and leaders (including Lincoln) still generally advocated the removal of African Americans from the country following the end of slavery, perhaps southward to the Caribbean or Latin America. And if such colonization efforts proved impractical, as they soon did, Republicans generally assured wary and racist northern voters that African Americans would stay in the southern states and labor in some subordinate role there and, thus, would not enter northern states or communities in significant numbers. The deeply rooted racist attitudes of white northerners, including most Republicans, made a commitment to racial egalitarianism unachievable in the mid-nineteenth century. What the devout abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison referred to as the “worst passions of human nature” provided a powerful and nearly immovable barrier to the embrace of full equality that he devoted decades of his life to achieving, but which remained ultimately elusive.