Kansas-Nebraska Research Articles

"There is a North": Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War by John L. Brooke

Reviewed by: "There is a North": Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War by John L. Brooke Adam Smith (bio) Keywords Fugitive slaves, U.S. Civil War, Slavery, Fugitive Slave Act "There is a North": Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War. By John L. Brooke. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019. Pp. 376. Paper, $26.95.) The premise of this important book is that to understand the coming of the Civil War we need to focus less on why it happened and more on how it did. It is probably true that, as Chris Clark argued in his book on the coming of the First World War, Sleepwalkers, historians often under-study the "how" compared with the "why." In truth, the two are often so entangled that without a careful sequencing of events and forensic attention to relationships and communication, the "why" can become an abstraction. So far as the American Civil War is concerned, no serious historian disagrees with Abraham Lincoln's observation in his second inaugural about why the war came: Slavery, he said, was "somehow, the cause of the war." The historiographical question is about that "somehow." The brilliance of John Brooke's analysis is to engage with this "how" question by setting in a single frame both the political and the cultural transformations of the 1850s, and then to offer a method for understanding the nature of their entanglement. The literature on the coming of the Civil War is usually framed (one might say "caricatured") as a debate between "fundamentalists" and "revisionists." The former emphasize the inevitability of an "irrepressible conflict" between free society and one based on human enslavement, while the latter point out that since there had been a division over slavery since at least the revolutionary era without a civil war, the critical question was what happened in the 1850s to disrupt the political order—and sometimes they have found answers that do not bear directly on slavery at all. Like the "fundamentalists," Brooke sees slavery as an intractable, deep-seated problem. Indeed, he effectively aligns himself with the most recent variant of the "fundamentalist" school as exemplified by the work of Richard Blackett and Manisha Sinha, which specifically identifies the self-emancipation of enslaved people as the critical disruptive force. But, like the "revisionists," Brooke's focus is on why, given this instability, the system broke down when it did. Until quite recently it was the accepted wisdom that the Compromise of 1850 temporarily quieted the sectional conflict until it was ripped open [End Page 171] again by the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act. That, after all, was apparently how Abraham Lincoln experienced those years. But Brooke joins many other scholars in moving the critical juncture earlier by emphasising the destabilizing, radical impact of the Underground Railroad and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The famous "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" that triggered the political realignments of the mid-1850s fell on fertile ground; the northern population had already become newly conscious of the humanity of enslaved people and the threat to the polity inherent in maintaining the slave system. The Fugitive Slave Act was a brutal manifestation of the apparent intention of the Slave Power to force the submission to their rule not just of Black people but also of white northerners who were legally compelled, in theory, to assist in the rendition of fugitives. There is a refreshing clarity to Brooke's insistence that the arena we need to focus on in is, in the end, not the South but the North. The white South, after all, knew only too well how difficult it was to maintain slavery. Whatever the proslavery literature claimed to the contrary, the obvious reality that enslaved people wanted to be free drove the politics of the South. Slaveholders needed the Federal government to be strong enough to be coercive and willing to uphold the doctrine of property in man. As Brooke writes, the white South would never have been willing to accept a Federal government controlled by a party that did not accept the legitimacy of slave property. That had been as...

The F Street Mess: How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act by Alice Elizabeth Malavasic

Reviewed by: The F Street Mess: How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act by Alice Elizabeth Malavasic Andrew F. Hammann (bio) The F Street Mess: How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act. By Alice Elizabeth Malavasic. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 280. Cloth, $29.95.) Alice Elizabeth Malavasic tells the story, and indeed the backstory, of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, a piece of legislation passed in 1854 and commonly cited by historians as the catalyst of the rise of the Republican Party and the sectional discord that became civil war. Malavasic's narrative, which spans the years 1837 to 1861, recounts how a tight-knit group of Congressmen who lived together on F Street in Washington, DC—David Atchison of Missouri, Andrew Butler of South Carolina, and [End Page 605] Robert Hunter and James Mason of Virginia—came to play a decisive role in proposing and defending the most controversial element of the Kansas–Nebraska Act: the repeal of the Missouri Compromise's 36' 30" line, which banned slavery north of this latitude in the Louisiana Territory. Malavasic is not the first historian to point out that the F Street Mess wielded considerable power in shaping and passing a piece of legislation associated, most commonly, with Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois. She acknowledges this by pointing to past works by Michael Holt, Allan Nevins, David Potter, and, most recently, Rachel Shelden in Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013). What The F Street Mess adds to existing scholarship, Malavasic contends, is a deeper understanding of the role that the "group dynamic" among the four messmates played in constituting their outsized collective influence (14). Malavasic meticulously guides readers through the Kansas–Nebraska debates' complex politics and historical context. She explicates, often with notable clarity, a range of legal arguments made in favor of, or against repeal of, the 36' 30" line and connects these positions to the partisan agendas and personal interests (mostly land speculation and reelection) of the men who formulated them. To keep things lively, Malavasic inflects her delivery with moments of literary flair meant to conjure a sense of historical atmosphere. A good example appears in the lead paragraphs of Chapter 4 where she describes the commencement of the 1853–1854 Congressional session. Malavasic begins by panning around the vast, ornate Senate chamber and establishing each F Street Mess member's location within it. She then shifts the reader's gaze to the "small unadorned" and "spindly" current-bill box on whose bottom shelf a new Kansas–Nebraska bill would most likely soon be placed (81). With a sense of foreshadowing, she finally adds, "whether it would be one of the few [bills] to make it to the narrow top shelf" before the session's end was "uncertain"; "what it would look like if it did" was quite uncertain as well (82). The most intriguing aspect of the book lies in its overall conceptualization. Like Rachel Shelden, Malavasic points out that political histories can give insufficient attention to the ways that personal relationships shaped the political process. More commonly emphasized factors such as "ideology, party, and region" mattered, she readily acknowledges, but in certain instances "friendships" forged and sustained outside of [End Page 606] legislative halls overshadowed these factors in determining the laws produced within them (17). Malavasic contends that the Kansas–Nebraska Act, specifically the Missouri Compromise repeal article, was just such an instance. As valid and intriguing as Malavasic's framework is, it connects to an unsteady aspect of the book. While The F Street Mess provides thoughtful biographies of the individual messmates, it does not deliver a full enough sense of the Mess's group dynamic—the book's purported argumentative hinge—or the interpersonal elements that comprised it. In the first and second chapters, for instance, Malavasic makes much of John Calhoun being key to understanding the F Street Mess's cohesion and influence—"they were the heirs of Calhoun," she asserts (59). Yet these chapters, and subsequent ones, leave readers wanting deeper and more specific explanations of how each member personally understood this "inheritance" and how these understandings...

"A General Concurrence in the Propriety of the Repeal": Male Friendship, Party, and Section in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill

"A General Concurrence in the Propriety of the Repeal": Male Friendship, Party, and Section in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill

Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory by Brent M. Rogers

Reviewed by: Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory by Brent M. Rogers Amy S. Greenberg (bio) Key Words Mormons, Utah Territory, Popular sovereignty, Utah War, Expansionism, Gender Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory. By Brent M. Rogers. ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. 402. Paper, $32.00.) "What is this popular sovereignty," asked the Bangor Daily Whig on April 18, 1857, "if under it the Mormons may not keep as many wives [End Page 183] as they please? It protects slaveholding, according to democratic doctrine; why not polygamy?" Although the newspaper's equation of slavery with a marriage practice northerners and southerners alike deemed barbaric was deliberately provocative, the question was not without merit. Popular sovereignty is virtually synonymous with the Kansas–Nebraska Act in the historical imagination. But Brent Rogers's welcome study of Mormon struggles for self-governance in Utah Territory reminds readers that Bleeding Kansas wasn't the sole locus in the national debate over the exercise of power in federal territories in the second half of the 1850s. His close examination of events in Utah joins Christopher Childers, The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics (Lawrence, KS, 2012), in inviting a reconsideration of reigning narratives of this crucial political concept. The 1856 Republican Party platform identified slavery and polygamy as the "twin relics of barbarism" (15), but because much of the Mormon experience has been treated as exceptional within mainstream historiography, it's been easy for scholars of antebellum political development to bracket the second twin. Not so for non-Mormons in the 1850s. While proslavery and antislavery forces battled to control Kansas, Mormon settlers were busy establishing a theocracy in the far West that onlookers considered deeply disturbing. Mormon settlers driven west to the territory they called Deseret after persecution in Missouri and Illinois were desperate to gain statehood and political autonomy, but the sect was denied the authority it craved by a federal government that questioned Mormons' loyalty. The Compromise of 1850 brought Utah into the union as a territory governed by popular sovereignty. Mormons, like southerners, opportunistically embraced popular sovereignty out of hopes that it might offer them protection for their "peculiar institution." But Democratic support for popular sovereignty was undermined by events in Utah. The doctrine of plural marriage was deeply threatening to the gender norms of non-Mormons, and the presence of U.S. soldiers in Utah infuriated Mormon men who grounded their masculinity in their ability to control Mormon female sexuality. At the same time, ongoing fears of Mormon–Indian conspiracy were exacerbated by Mormon Indian policy, directed by Superintendent of Indian Affairs Brigham Young, which clearly undermined Federal authority. Mormons proselytized among Indians, and expended federal funds to ingratiate themselves [End Page 184] with tribal leaders. Territorial expansion made the sect increasingly hard for the rest of the country to ignore. Lodged in the path of the much-desired transcontinental railroad, the Mormons were "perceived by most Americans as a subversive imperium in imperio threatening to halt progress and emigration across the plains, and take possession of that critical regional crossroads" (143). The presence of Mormons thus jeopardized the expansion of both monogamy and national territorial sovereignty. The Buchanan administration was forced to choose between supporting its own doctrine of popular sovereignty and asserting federal authority in the West, knowing full well that actions contrary to the interests of local inhabitants would exacerbate southern fears of federal power, and that "repudiating popular sovereignty in Utah might strike a blow to the potential of slavery expansion in the new territories" (149). In 1857, Mormons disguised as Indians killed 120 California-bound immigrants. Brigham Young declared martial law four days after the massacre, forbade armed forces from entering the territory, and ordered the territory militia to prepare to defend the Salt Lake Valley. This clear act of rebellion drove Buchanan to send in the army. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was not the cause of federal assertions of authority over Utah; Rogers argues that "was already well in motion" (180) but the resulting Utah War of 1857, the "antebellum period's most influential display...

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

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...

Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War ed. by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith

Reviewed by: Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War ed. by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith Michelle Orihel (bio) Keywords Whig, Politics, Voting, Democracy, Political parties Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War. Edited by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Pp. 304. Cloth, $49.50.) In Practicing Democracy, Douglas Bradburn observes: “American historians have overwhelmingly been Whig historians” (26). The phrase “Whig history” originated in Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History, published in 1931. Whig historians used the past, Butterfield argued, to explain and sanction the triumph of liberal democracy in nineteenth-century Britain. By orienting their studies toward that achievement, historians failed to understand the past on its own terms. In the United States, Whig history manifests itself in the democratization model of development. This model presents the nation as democratizing steadily over time, with democracy encompassing free elections, an expanding electorate, and a two-party system. Andrew Robertson contends that historians of nineteenth-century American politics have especially adopted a Whig perspective (99). Many historians search for the roots of democracy in the early republic, and trace its rise from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. The ten essays in this compelling new volume edited by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith challenge that Whig trajectory. While Whig histories chart a linear path to democracy, the essays in Practicing Democracy present case studies of uneven development, improvisation, and instability. John L. Brooke conceptualizes historical time as “lumpy and punctuated” rather than “smooth and continuous” [End Page 155] (75). Similarly, Robertson depicts a “tortuous trajectory” of development, one in which “democratic ideology and practices ebbed and flowed” (99). Political participation also varied by ethnicity, sex, race, and class. Irish and German immigrants in New York City, Tyler Anbinder finds, remained largely disengaged from controversies like the Kansas–Nebraska Act that polarized Americans in the 1850s. Instead, immigrants focused on local issues such as schooling that affected them directly. Reeve Huston further stresses “the geographic and temporal unevenness” of democratic practices (55). Illustrating these variations, Daniel Peart demonstrates that during the Era of Good Feelings voter turnout was much higher in Illinois, a frontier state that lacked organized parties, than in Massachusetts, a state where partisanship persisted. This conclusion challenges the standard interpretation of that era as one of political apathy in which partisanship subsided. The era, Peart claims, should be called “the Era of Experimentation,” a label that applies to early republic politics in general (138). Graham A. Peck also highlights this political improvisation. A rapid turnover in officeholding in Illinois, he argues, gave voters numerous opportunities to elect new representatives. In constant dialogue with voters, politicians changed positions on issues to “reflect voters’ interests and judgments” (145). He concludes that the historical category “Second Party System” fails to convey that dynamism. Yet, many historians remain attached to the “Party System” concept, arguing that competitive political parties fueled democratization. Americans inherited this obsession with a two-party system, Bradburn argues, from early modern England: “The men who built the first party politics in the United States were ideological Whigs whose histories of England were filled with sharp dialectical fights between advocates for prerogative power and martyrs for liberty,” from the Parliamentarians and Royalists of the Civil War to the Whigs and Tories thereafter (40). This legacy, Bradburn maintains, shapes “the way too many American historians still write the history of their country” (41). Whig historians begin their inquiries with the two-party system, and then look backward to explain its origins and development. In his study of the movement to consolidate the city and suburbs of Philadelphia in 1851, Andrew Heath stresses that looking backward can be deceptive. Previous historians have seen consolidation as foreshadowing the urban machine politics of the late nineteenth century, but Heath argues that if one “look[s] forward from [End Page 156] . . . 1851, . . . the rise of boss rule does not seem preordained” (224). Instead, the consolidation movement reflected the reform and anti-party sentiments of elite Philadelphians in the 1850s, a group more...

Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden (review)

Reviewed by: Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden John M. Sacher (bio) Keywords Washington, Brotherhood, Civil War, Politics, Social Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War. By Rachel A. Shelden. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. 296. Cloth, $34.95.) In Washington Brotherhood, Rachel A. Shelden provides the reader a behind-the-scenes look at politics in the nation’s capital from the 1840s to the secession crisis. Politics always exists beyond the traditional spheres of speeches and elections, but this was especially true in antebellum Washington where lawmakers worked together, ate and drank together, and often lived together under the same roof. These men also participated in the same reform movements, went to the same churches, and had similar vices. This communal experience created ‘‘a fraternity of Washington politicians’’ (2) that more often than not crossed sectional and partisan lines. Additionally, this brotherhood gave these men a different view of the Union; a view where the prospect of compromise never disappeared. In contrast to other historians who see political divides over the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, and the Sumner–Brooks Affair as events that shattered the national parties, radiating out to disrupt state political parties, Shelden posits a Washington ‘‘bubble’’ which ‘‘shielded federal politicians from the difficulties of sectionalism and ultimately rendered many of them unprepared for the disunion movement’’ (5). In order to develop the story of the ‘‘real’’ Washington, Shelden divides her study chronologically and thematically. First, she uses the 1846 Wilmot Proviso to show the surprising unimportance of congressional speeches. She presents a picture of a Congress that suffered from [End Page 707] poor attendance, where even those who showed up paid little attention to their colleagues’ orations. Often speeches, most likely including the Wilmot Proviso, were not serious policy initiatives but instead ‘‘buncombe’’ meant primarily for one’s constituents back home. She follows this discussion with an examination of Lincoln’s first term, wherein membership in the cross-sectional Young Indian Club was certainly more important than his actions on the floor of Congress. The Young Indian Club demonstrated Washington’s associational culture—whereby congressmen joined colleagues from the same profession, religion, reform movement, or other interest group. Shelden further addresses the role of cross-sectional social events, especially dinners, in forging the Compromise of 1850 coalition. And, if eating meals together did not provide enough interaction, most politicians also lived with their colleagues. The majority of lawmakers resided in either boarding houses or hotels that included men from both North and South. These living arrangements, according to Shelden, abetted compromise, including passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Plus, the friendships forged over meals and in communal living spaces lasted beyond a politician’s time in Washington. Not all relationships, however, were positive. Bad behavior ranging from drinking and gambling to corruption to promiscuity to violence all had their place in this fraternity as well. Partially because of this shared culture of vice, politicians reacted more calmly to Preston Brooks’s beating of Charles Sumner than their constituents did, with business in the Capitol returning to normal within a month of the incident. Shelden offers many invaluable lessons for those studying antebellum politics both inside and outside the Washington ‘‘bubble.’’ First, one must be careful in using the Congressional Globe or newspaper accounts of Congress without considering context. Was a congressional speech carefully inserted into the local partisan newspaper truly important or was it simply buncombe? Second, historians too often portray political figures in an overly simplistic manner with ‘‘northern Whig’’ or ‘‘southern Democrat’’ serving as a full description of the man. Shelden reminds historians that they must be aware of how living arrangements, friendships, social ties, and business relationships added complexity to these ostensibly political relationships. Third, she reminds us that Washington was a permanent community interacting with its temporary residents. Men such as financier William Corcoran, perhaps the most important [End Page 708] mainstay of life in the nation’s capital, played a key role in shaping politics by hosting dinner parties, lending money, and providing valuable introductions. These permanent residents had a...

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz (review)

Reviewed by: Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz J. Brent Morris Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. Tony Horwitz. New York: Picador, 2012. ISBN 978-0-312-42926-3, 384 pp., paper, $18.00. Midway through Tony Horwitz’s 1998 bestseller Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, the author paid a brief visit to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of John Brown’s famous October 1859 raid. Most of the buildings in this “tourist trap” were already closed when he arrived late in the day, yet he still took a brief stroll through the streets near the federal arsenal. Before he continued on his road trip, Horwitz stopped to press his face up to the window of a wax museum that promised to portray the “Life Story of John Brown Youth to Gallows.” Undoubtedly, many readers of Confederates in the Attic, familiar with Horwitz’s other works, eagerly awaited the occasion for this master storyteller to revisit the scene at Harpers Ferry and explore, in his unique and very personal way, the life and memory of John Brown. However, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, apart from the prologue, represents a different approach. Horwitz notes, in this case, [End Page 530] that walking in history’s footsteps is never the same as actually being there. Regarding the Harpers Ferry raid and its participants, the author would rather strive to get “inside their heads,” analyze the raiders’ complicated motivations, and link the event to the Civil War that followed. In short, Midnight Rising is a work more of straight history and less of participant observation than what Horwitz’s readers might expect. John Brown was born into a pious Calvinist family in 1800, and Horwitz traces his transition to adulthood in a nation not much older than he was. Though the early growing pains of the United States thoroughly entangled the nation with slavery, by age twelve, young Brown however had dedicated himself to an eternal war with the institution. In his early thirties, he espoused the pacifism of Garrisonian abolitionism, but as anti-abolitionist violence escalated later in the decade, Brown began to demonstrate the growing militancy that would come to define his own brand of antislavery. By the 1840s, despite domestic heartbreak and financial disaster, he had foretold his Samson-like martyrdom in the cause of freedom. After discussing Brown’s fury over the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, Horwitz follows Brown, his sons, and a handful of other devotees to Kansas Territory. There, the author offers a compelling picture of the mature abolitionist: calculating, motivated, and relentless in his crusade to crush slavery. After Osawatomie, Brown’s reputation and devoted following grew, and Horwitz ably keeps up with his hurried pace, both in the planning of a decisive strike against slavery and the cross-country travels necessary to drum up support. The well-known story of the Harpers Ferry raid vividly comes to life in Horwitz’s telling. From the false starts and setbacks preceding the October 1859 action, to the play-by-play account of the assault on the federal arsenal, and the unraveling of Brown’s scheme, the author maintains a sense of immediacy that keeps pages turning, and readers on the edges of their seats, even scholars who know the story by heart. The author also does a commendable job of humanizing the dozens of historical actors who made up Brown’s supporting cast. Though many historians offer but a brief backstory for the men directly involved, Horwitz’s skill as a writer allows him to create truly three-dimensional characters. Moreover, he extends this rich treatment far beyond the eighteen men who followed Brown “to the Ferry” or the “Secret Six” backers. Mothers and fathers, wives and sweethearts, believers and doubters—all of these and more come to life. Without a doubt, Horwitz is an engaging writer. However, one questions the need for an account of such a well-known and often-analyzed story that offers very little...

Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane (review)

Reviewed by: Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane Cathy Rodabaugh (bio) Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane. By Ian Michael Spurgeon. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Pp. 291. Cloth, $42.50.) In 1879, the Kansas state legislature considered a bill to fill the state's two spots in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol with likenesses of [End Page 347] John Brown and James Lane. Neither man was eventually so honored. The choice of Brown was overwhelmingly popular among Kansans, but ultimately he inspired too many polarizing passions for touchy politicos of the period.1 If Ian Spurgeon's Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln is correct, despite Lane's indisputable impact on events in Bleeding Kansas, Lane's personality and powerful political enemies probably contributed to his rapid fall from grace in the national memory. Spurgeon admits up front that James Henry Lane was a "notorious" antebellum politician and "tragic figure of territorial and Civil War Kansas" (1). As the free-state movement's military commander, he often itched restlessly for action, but was also given to grandiose gestures and theatrical speeches, the latter aiding his rise to become Kansas' first U. S. senator. The book's title alludes to the main controversy surrounding Lane—what Nicole Etcheson calls his apparent "chameleon-like" willingness to change political views.2 Raised an ardent Democrat, in 1854 Lane was a U.S. senator from Indiana, Stephen Douglas ally, and supporter of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Arriving in Kansas Territory in 1855, he quickly promoted himself as a leader in the developing free-state movement, which Spurgeon ably demonstrates did not require Kansas men to alter alliances to national political parties. The movement grew in national importance the more it resisted Kansas' new pro-slavery government and legislature, installed as the result of Missourians crossing the border to vote. Examined on the face, Lane's fairly typical Northern Democrat free-soilism appears to have morphed into aggressive free-statism, and then pro-Lincoln and later radical Republicanism, eventually shifting yet again to support for conservative Andrew Johnson. Without the benefit of a Lane memoir, some biographers accuse Lane of operating primarily out of opportunism and self-promotion. Correcting this miscalculation of [End Page 348] Lane is Spurgeon's main goal. While acknowledging Lane's sometimes shocking behavior and savvy political maneuvering in service of his own ambitions, Spurgeon insists scholars have largely missed the explanation for Lane's shifting political alignments—an unwavering loyalty to "old-line Democratic principles, including popular sovereignty" (17). Man of Douglas joins a rash of recent books on Lane, perhaps an indication that antebellum actors on the Kansas stage long overshadowed by Brown now benefit from a resurgence of interest. Spurgeon's book promises to be the most useful, given its sound scholarship and portentous chronological range—from Lane's 1854 migration from Indiana to his 1866 suicide. By comparison, Robert Collins's Jim Lane lacks Spurgeon's deep reading of political events in Kansas and Washington D.C., while Bryce Benedict's Jayhawkers is primarily a military history of the Civil War regiments from Kansas under Lane's command, the so-called "Lane Brigade."3 Ironically, the strength of Spurgeon's book—its close political analysis and tight chronology—is also its primary weakness. In Minerva-like fashion, Spurgeon's Lane almost leaps to life fully formed and armored in Democratic Party ideology, poised to march onto the contentious stage of antebellum partisan politics. The influences of Lane's background, family, or earlier experiences receive scant attention, when remedying this flaw would not have rendered this 291-page book overly long. For example, Spurgeon does not tell readers that the year of Lane's birth, father Amos moved the family back to Indiana after a self-imposed exile to Kentucky, purportedly the result of political persecution for his fervent support of Democratic Party politics.4 While Spurgeon briefly acknowledges the "deep passion" (20) for the party Amos Lane instilled in his son, he misses an opportunity to analyze Lane's later struggles over party loyalty in the context of early...

New Insights on the Sequence Stratigraphic Architecture of the Dakota Formation in Kansas–Nebraska–Iowa from a Decade of Sponsored Research Activity

The Cretaceous Dakota Formation in the areas of Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa contains a rich and well-preserved microflora of fossil palynomorphs. A comprehensive listing of these taxa is presented in this publication as part of a continuing effort to develop a refined biostratigraphic scheme for mid-Cretaceous terrestrial deposits in North America. The Dakota Formation in this region contains four distinctive Albian-Cenomanian palynostratigraphic zones that are used to partition the unit into successive depositional cycles, and each zone records deposition in fluvial-estuarine environments. The late Albian Kiowa-Skull Creek depositional cycle at the base of the Dakota Formation is recognized throughout the study area, and is also recognized in other parts of the Cretaceous North American Western Interior basin. The overlying newly recognized latest Albian "Muddy-Mowry Cycle" is formally defined for the first time in this paper and correlates with depositional cycles recognized by other workers in other parts of the Western Interior basin. The Cenomanian lower Greenhorn Cycle is already widely recognized by many other workers throughout the Western Interior basin. Laterally extensive thin zones of pervasive carbonate mineral cementation are noted in fluvial-estuarine deposits in the Dakota Formation. They are believed to have formed as synsedimentary cements that precipitated below estuarine marine-flooding surfaces in settings related to discharging paleoground waters. The existence of these early diagenetic cementation zones has important implications for the recognition of diagenetic barriers and baffles to modern fluid flow in the Dakota Formation. New stable isotopic data on these authigenic cements are reported in this paper and add to a body of published data on the δ18O of mid-Cretaceous paleoprecipitation in North America.

Letters

This book provides informationfor local histo rians and could be a handy reference for schools, museums, and historical societies. FrancisDrake in Nehalem Bay 1579:Setting the Historical Record Straight byGarry D. Gitzen Isnik Publishing, Wheeler, Oregon, 2008. Illustrations, photographs, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 255 pages. $59-95 cloth. $39-95 paper. This book challengesthebelief thatFrancisDrake landedhis GoldenHinde inCalifornia in 1579by arguing thathewas actually in Oregon's Nehalem Bay. The author explores surveying, navigation, geology,ethnology, geography, and cartographyto put forthhis premise thatFrancisDrake was the first European to interact culturally, spiritually and physically with PacificNorthwest coast Indians. Skeena River Fish and TheirHabitat byAllen S.Gottesfeld and Ken A. Rabnett forewordby JimLichatowich Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon, 2008. Photographs, maps, tables, bibliography, index. 352 pages. $29.95 paper. Allen Gottesfeld, head scientist for the Skeena Fisheries Commission, and Ken Rabnett, a fish eries researcher, have both been residents of the Skeena watershed for over twenty-five years. In thisbook, theyshareextensiveknowledge of the river and its fish, focusing on the freshwater part of thesalmon lifecycle intheireffort to shed light on this stillpoorly understood watershed. The SkeenaRiver is thesecond largestriversystemin BritishColumbia and one of the most productive salmon rivers inNorth America. Images of America: West Linn by Cornelia Becker Seigneur Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2008. Photographs, bibliography, index. 128pages. $21.99 paper. This new pictorial historyof West Linn includes more than 200 vintage photographs. Many of the photographs have never before been pub lished, including those of thefirstfairprincess; theoriginal City Hall built in 1936, which now houses the police station; and thehistoric fire department.Although an 1861fire, then flood, destroyedwhat was originallyLinn City, the site at Willamette Falls continued drawing industry, and West Linn, known for its hills, trees, rivers, and famous meteorite unearthed in 1902, was incorporated into Oregon in 1913. Heavy Burdens on Small Shoulders: The Labour ofPioneer Children on theCanadian Prairies by Sandra Rollings-Magnusson The University ofAlberta Press, Edmonton, 2009. Pho tographs, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 192pages. $34-95 paper. Only a century ago on the Canadian prairies, young people labored alongside theirparents working the land, chopping wood, and doing othernecessary chores,all the while learningthe domesticandmanual laborskills needed forlife on a family farm. The author uses historic research, photographs, and personal anecdotes to describe thekindsofwork performedby childrenand how thesetasksfitintothefamilyeconomy.The book contributes to the study of western Canadian his tory as well as family and gender studies. _LETTERS To theEditor: It is surprisingthatBarbaraMahoney inher articleon the slaveryissue in theOregon State hood contest chose to completely ignore the Dred Scott case. The case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in early 1857at theheight of the debate, and ithad a direct impacton the issues before Oregon voters and their representatives. According toCharles H. Carey (General History ofOregon, p. 505), "The effect of thedecision as 650 OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 applied toOregon was everywhere debated inthat Territory." But Mahoney's analysis is completely silent on the subject. Briefly, Dred Scottwas the slave of anArmy doctor who took him from Missouri, a slave state, to awestern territory. Slavery was prohibited here by the Missouri Compromise, the law that made thenorth half of theLouisiana Purchase except for Missouri freeof slavery. Then Scott and his master went to Illinois, which was a free state, and finally back to Missouri. The doctor soldhim and Scott sued the new owner in federal court, claiming thatlivingintheterritory and inIllinois hadmade him free. The court found againsthim and Scott appealed. Chief Justice Taney,writing fortheU.S. Supreme Court, held thatScottmay have been free while he was in Illinois but this didn't make him a U.S. citizen. When he came back to Missouri, hewas subject to Missouri law, which consideredhim a slaveagain.And he didn't become freeby being in the territory, because Congress had no power to take a slave owner's propertywithout due process of law.Thus the Missouri Compromise was nullified. Actually, the so called "squatter sovereignty" doctrinehad alreadyreplaced the Missouri Com promise. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854had decreed thatthe slaveryissuewould be decided ineachTerritory by a vote of theresidents. Chief Justice Taney doesn't mention it,but his logic apparently wiped away thatpossible restraint on the spread of slavery also. The decision posed...

The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln (review)

The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln. By Michael William Pfau. (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2005. Pp. 248. Cloth, $59.95.)Reviewed by Frederick J. BlueThe controversy over the Slave Power Conspiracy divided antebellum Americans and has continued to divide historians who write about the ultimate cause of the Civil War. In this volume, a scholar of rhetoric adds his input to the ongoing controversy. The result is a study that will interest those who study the prewar years, but may receive greater attention from those in the field of rhetorical studies.It is Michael Pfau's contention that the claim of a Slave Power Conspiracy passed out of the hands of those on the fringe of sectional division to those in the mainstream during the 1840s and 1850s, in large part due to the efforts of Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, and Abraham Lincoln. The proponents of conspiracy argued that southern slaveholders and politicians conspired with northern Democrats and Whigs to control national politics and permit the expansion of slavery and the increase of their political and economic power in the process. In so doing, the conspirators threatened the basic principles of the Republic established by the Revolutionary founding fathers. Among the earliest proponents of such a claim were the Garrisonians, who argued from a fringe position in society and who were often dismissed as irrational fanatics. Richard Hofstadter and David Brion Davis described their ap- proach as the paranoid style, which used arguments that, if not false, were at least questionable.While some conspiracy theories remained the view only of extremists, others, argue Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood, moved from the fringe to the mainstream in America and, as such, entered the two-party system. Such was the direction of the Slave Power Conspiracy. Looking at the opposite poles of fringe and center, Pfau contends that the process of winning minds to the theory was a rhetorical one. Critics suggest that William Lloyd Garrison used lurid and exaggerated imagery to describe a vast and sinister effort that began with a proslavery Constitution. His was a holy war, says Pfau, which not only disdained politics but degenerated into Garrison's withdrawal and the violence of John Brown.While this was taking place, political antislavery activists moved the debate first into third-party politics and then into the two-party system. Some might question Pfau's choice of the three leading Republicans, especially when he suggests that the three were leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860; Sumner did not seek the office, nor did he receive serious consideration.Yet the speeches Pfau chooses to analyze are central in the Slave Power Conspiracy evolution. Beginning with Chase, Pfau shows how the Ohioan began to move away from the periphery of Liberty party politics with his 1845 Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention in Cincinnati, distancing the party from its more reform-minded religious element in an effort to form a coalition with northern antislavery Democrats. It was a secular approach stressing civic and republican ideology, in which Chase showed how southern aristocrats had strayed from their Jeffersonian roots. By 1854, when Chase joined with five other Free Soilers in authoring the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, the issue had become the Kansas Nebraska Act, the crowning proof of Slave Power Conspiracy. …

Explaining John Sherman: Leader of the Second American Revolution

Explaining John ShermanLeader of the Second American Revolution Marc Egnal (bio) Explaining John Sherman has an importance that goes beyond the activities of one midwestern politician. Although his older brother, Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, is better known today, John had a far greater impact on nineteenth-century America. His public career stretched from the late 1840s to the end of the century. No single figure was more important in shaping the policies of the early Republican Party or in laying the basis for the broad set of changes called the "Second American Revolution." Thus, explaining John Sherman sheds light on the direction of the party he helped establish, as well as the creation of the modern industrial state.1 The arc of Sherman's career suggests the central role he played during a half-century in politics, and the respect his colleagues accorded him. Sherman entered politics as a Whig but, angered by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, became a founder of the Republican Party. Elected to Congress from Ohio in 1854, he soon stood out for his legislative skills and clear sense of purpose. Passing over more senior members, the Speaker in 1856 chose Sherman and [End Page 105] two other lawmakers to investigate conditions in Kansas. With Sherman doing most of the work, the committee produced a 1,300-page report that excoriated the proslavery forces and provided an extraordinary source of information for Republican partisans inside and outside Congress. In the ensuing debates, Sherman distinguished himself by his passionate opposition to the spread of slavery and the clarity of his vision for the economy. When the thirty-sixth Congress convened in December 1859, Sherman was the overwhelming choice of the Republicans for Speaker. But the Ohioan had inadvertently signed a memorial endorsing Hinton Rowan Helper's abolitionist tract and on a series of ballots fell three votes short of a majority. After two months of fruitless divisions, Sherman withdrew. He became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (the second most important position in the House) and helped guide the Morrill tariff through Congress. Republicans agreed that had Sherman remained in the House after secession, they would have elected him Speaker. However, in 1861 the Ohio legislature elevated Sherman to the Senate, providing him with a new forum for his views and a new base of power. He took the lead in pushing through legislation for the National Banking System, income tax, and the new greenback currency. During Reconstruction he was a strong supporter of the Fourteenth Amendment and helped author the Reconstruction Act of 1867. Sherman continued to shape financial policy, and was largely responsible for demonetizing silver—the so-called "Crime of 1873." He then helped partially reverse that decision, securing the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. His antimonopoly sentiments were embodied in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. He served as secretary of the treasury under President Hayes and secretary of state under William McKinley. Sherman did not achieve all his goals, and in the age of the spoilsmen and all-powerful monopolies he was often out of step with his party. But no single Republican was more influential during the second half of the nineteenth century.2 What motivated this man? Was Sherman driven by a concern for the fate of African Americans? The short answer is no; however, it is important to elaborate on that answer. After all, a significant group of Republicans were reformers before they became politicians. These individuals, including Charles Sumner, George Julian, Charles Francis Adams, and Salmon Chase, had long histories of opposing slavery and campaigning for the rights of free blacks. Sherman was not in that coterie.3 "I am no Abolitionist," Sherman announced in 1856. "I have always been a conservative [End Page 106] Whig. I was willing to stand by all the compromises—of 1850 and all." The Kansas Nebraska Act jarred Sherman loose from his old political moorings and made him among the first to join the Republican Party. But before the war his goal was preserving the West for free settlers, not addressing the injustices of slavery. He emphatically rejected abolition. During...

SYSTEMATICS OF ISOLATED POPULATIONS OF SHORT-TAILED SHREWS (SORICIDAE: BLARINA) IN TEXAS

Abstract Two isolated and taxonomically unassigned populations of short-tailed shrews (Blarina) exist in Texas, 1 in the Lost Pines region including Bastrop County and 1 at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast. Molecular and morphological methods were used to determine the systematic status of the 2 disjunct Texas populations. Multivariate analyses of size-influenced cranial measurements were unsuccessful in identifying specimens from these populations at the species level. Phylogenetic analyses of the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene revealed that the samples from disjunct Texas populations form a monophyletic sister clade to B. hylophaga from Kansas and Nebraska; there is little divergence between the 2 Texas populations. Genetic divergence between Texas and Kansas–Nebraska B. hylophaga is comparable to taxonomically recognized east–west divisions within B. brevicauda and B. carolinensis. Therefore, the name Blarina hylophaga plumbea, which originally was applied to the Aransas County popul...

The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War (review)

278CIVIL WAR HISTORY was an active participant at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 186768 and served one term as a state senator in 1869-71 . Thus, Teamoh is able to provide a rare insider's view of these events. He looks critically and candidly at a number of important issues, including the role played by AfricanAmerican delegates to the state convention; his efforts as a state senator to promote equitable work policies at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard; and the factionalism within the Republican party that led to his defeat. One wishes only that Teamoh had written more. The entire autobiography runs a mere 101 pages, making it a very brief narrative for a man with such a rich and varied story to tell. Roughly one-third of the discussion focuses on the especially important Reconstruction period. While Teamoh's comments on politics are lengthy and instructive, at times they merely whet the reader's appetite; Teamoh alludes to his involvement with the Union League and the initial stages of the black political community's mobilization, for example , but he never delves fully into the matter. Essays by the editors of the narrative partially offset God Made Man's brevity and deserve a special note ofpraise. F. N. Boney and Richard Hume's introduction paints a clear and finely textured portrait of the world surrounding Teamoh, making the narrative more accessible and more meaningful for scholars and general readers alike. Rafia Zafar, a literary scholar andTeamoh's descendant, provides an additional point of reference through a close comparison of Teamoh's autobiography with other slave narratives. Stephen Vincent University of Rhode Island The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War. By Bruce Levine. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 378. $34-95) This book brings a much-needed transatlantic and bottom-up perspective to a study of the radical democratic movement among plebeian German Americans . It can be seen as a long overdue counterweight to Carl Wittke's work on the Forty-eighters, which concentrated almost exclusively on liberal bourgeois elites. In two chapters focused on the German side, Levine traces the deteriorating position of artisans (and rural smallholders, as well) in the decades before 1848 and documents their presence alongside bourgeois liberals in the revolution , both on the barricades and in the political councils, where they often attempted to push the movement in a more radical direction. The overthrow of this divided revolution brought to America many plebeian rebels along with their better-educated and more famous comrades in arms. While the New World brought a fundamentally different political system, there was much that was familiar in the economic plight of immigrants, especially in the artisan branches where Germans were most heavily concen- BOOK REVIEWS279 trated. The rapid industrialization of the 1840s and 1850s brought with it "increasing wholesale production, the intensification and division of labor, stepped up competition, and declining skill requirements" (67). Immigrant workers often drew upon European traditions and experiences to deal with these challenges. But while a small Communist movement did spring up, "the handful of Marxists were overwhelmingly outnumbered by adherents of . . . radical democratic 'red republicanism' " (142), an ideology owing more to Thomas Paine than to Marx. However, internal divisions, vestiges of guild loyalties, and ambivalence toward the wage system limited the successes of both strikes and cooperative ventures by German workers. The last 120 pages, dealing with German American politics from 1854 through i860, hold the greatest interest for readers of this journal. WhUe its outlines will be familiar to many, Levine adds more than just nuances to the story. Particularly valuable is his detailed, grassroots-level examination of German responses to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. He goes on to trace the interaction of sectional, class, and ethnocultural issues down to the Civil War. Two interesting sidelights also emerge: rank-and-file Germans showed more racial idealism than they have been credited with; the Turnerian safety-valve theory, at least in relation to immigrant urbanités, deserves resurrection certainly as an ideological and perhaps as a socioeconomic factor. The work occasionally suffers from selectivity of evidence. The author cites coppersmith Nicholas Schwenck several...

Resources for Teaching about Nationalism, 1812 to the Civil War

The period between 1812 and the Civil War vas a time of tremendous change in the United States. Events like the War of 1812, the annexation of Texas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the continuing question of slavery were paramount dur ing this period of U.S. History. This ERIC column will highlight materials available from the Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) sys tem. Documents may be purchased from ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS), 3900 Wheeler Ave., Alexandria, VA 22304-5110, in either microfiche (MP) or paper copy (PC). Orders should be accompanied by a check or money order. EDRS now provides a toll-free number (1-800-227-3742) for customer service and phone orders. Entries followed by an EJ number are annotated monthly in CUE (Current Index to Journals in Edu cation^ which is available in libraries containing ERIC collections. EJ docu ments are not available through EDRS; however, they can be located in the journal section of most libraries using the bibliographic information provided in each annotation. Additional resources on Nationalism and the time period between 1812 and the Civil War can be found by searching the monthly ERIC index RESOURCES IN EDUCATION, located in many libraries throughout the country. These libraries also may have complete microfiche col lections of ERIC documents available for viewing. EJ 295 902. and the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, by William J. Medland and Morton M. Rosenberg in INDIANA SOCIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Winter 1983-84, volume 36, number 3, pp. 22-31. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which re pealed the ban against slavery in the North, served as a catalyst to activate numerous groups which were unhappy with the Indiana Democratic party. From this period emerged the new Republican party and also a revitalized Democratic party with new leadership.

Education as a Vehicle of Racial Control: Major General N. P. Banks in Louisiana, 1863-64

In the years immediately preceding the Civil War, Nathanial Banks, the son of a Massachusetts factory mechanic, loosely aligned himself with the anti-slavery movement. Banks first entered national politics when he was elected to Congress in 1854 as Massachusett's lone Democratic member of the House of Representatives. However, he broke with his party when he opposed the Kansas Nebraska bill. He then courted the Free Soil movement and the nativists until finally in 1856 he joined the Republican party. In the same year he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1857 Banks left Congress and began a threeyear term as Republican Governor of Massachusetts. Throughout his term he quarrelled continually with abolitionists who accused him of being far too moderate on the slavery question.1 When war broke, President Lincoln commissioned Banks as a Major General of Volunteers. During the first two years of the war, General Banks spent his time organizing Washington's defenses and countering Stonewall Jackson's raids in the Shenandoah Valley. In December 1862 Lincoln appointed General Banks to replace radical General Benjamin Butler as Commander of the Department of the Gulf.2

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War.

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War.

Gerald W. Wolff. <italic>The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War</italic>. (Studies in Nineteenth Century American History.) New York: Revisionist Press. 1977. Pp. vii, 380. $49.95

Journal Article Gerald W. Wolff. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War. (Studies in Nineteenth Century American History.) New York: Revisionist Press. 1977. Pp. vii, 380. $49.95 Get access Wolff Gerald W.. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War. (Studies in Nineteenth Century American History.) New York: Revisionist Press. 1977. Pp. vii, 380. $49.95. Joel H. Silbey Joel H. Silbey Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 84, Issue 2, April 1979, Page 555, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/84.2.555 Published: 01 April 1979

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War