The Worst Passions of Human Nature: White Supremacy in the Civil War North

Abstract

At the leisure end of a career in letters that has featured more than a dozen scholarly monographs, Paul D. Escott, Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University, offers an analysis of white supremacy in the Civil War–era North, a topic devoid of enjoyment, presented in the spirit of civic engagement. “Problems must be acknowledged in order to be solved,” Escott insists, and his timely and concise account shows that extreme racism persisted and gained even amid the tremendous racial progress of the 1860s (p. 7). The Worst Passions of Human Nature considers the history of racist ideas within the chronological boundaries of secession and the war years. Escott plumbs the opinions of newspaper editors, intellectuals and authors, including those peddling racial “science,” Democratic party officials, and even racist Republicans, whom Escott, the author of a recent profile of conservative Lincolnite Montgomery Blair, tags as advocates of colonizing...