Ashworth, John.  Slavery, capitalism, and politics in the antebellum republic: v.2: The coming of the Civil War, 1850-1861.  Cambridge, 2008 (c2007).  683p index; ISBN 9780521713696 pbk, $34.99; ISBN 9780521885928, $120.00.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2008dec CHOICE.
46-2269  E441  95009957 CIP

Ashworth (Univ. of Nottingham) continues his contrarian interpretation of the origins of the Civil War in this second volume of his masterful synthesis (V. 1, Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850, CH, Sep’98, 34-0488), which analyzes the political disintegration of the 1850s. The essentials of Ashworth’s argument, framed in Marxian and Gramscian terms, are that the Civil War was a “bourgeois revolution” that ended slaveholders’ hegemony in US society. Southern slavery simply could not compete with northern free labor as a system of economic and social organization. Slavery’s fundamental weakness was that slaves and slaveholders were rooted in class conflict (here, Ashworth’s definition of class goes beyond that of Marx, E.P. Thompson, and others), predicated on the fact that slaves resisted their enslavement in any way possible. This simple but powerful (and often underrecognized) reality accounted for the fundamental weakness of slavery as an economic system, as well as the hyperaggressiveness of white southerners in defending their “institutions” from threats real or imagined. Much of Ashworth’s analysis is not new, but rather a recasting and reinterpretation of striking intellectual originality. His command of the literature is formidable and his arguments elegantly and forcefully stated. Ashworth’s conclusions will not be accepted by all scholars, but his contribution to the Civil War debate is both insightful and important. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — K M. Gannon, Grand View College

Baker, H. Robert.  The rescue of Joshua Glover: a fugitive slave, the Constitution, and the coming of the Civil War.  Ohio University, 2007 (c2006).  260p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8214-1690-1, $38.95; ISBN 9780821416907, $38.95. Reviewed in 2008jan CHOICE.
45-2783  KF4545  2006-22720 CIP

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 provides grist for many studies of the late antebellum period. Baker (Georgia State Univ.) examines its operation in Wisconsin through the celebrated rescue of Joshua Glover by antislavery activists and the subsequent legal and legislative activities to protect the rescuers from the consequences of federal law. In the end, the Glover rescue prodded partisan realignment and the emergence of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, which struggled with both antislavery and immigrant issues and ultimately led the rescuers to the Supreme Court in Ableman v. Booth. Joining a welter of studies, including Leonard Richards, The Slave Power (CH, May’01, 38-5182), and Don Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic (2001), this monograph demonstrates how federal policies led many antebellum northerners to oppose slavery because it threatened the liberty of white men under constitutional government. Further, the book illustrates how both North and South prosecuted the debate over slavery with the tool of states’ rights as a means rather than as an ends. Finally, Baker convincingly shows how interposition and police power operated in the legal context prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment, and convincingly distinguishes Ableman from Cooper v. Aaron in its legal and historical circumstances. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. — E. R. Crowther, Adams State College

Barney, William L.  The making of a Confederate: Walter Lenoir’s Civil War.  Oxford, 2008.  245p index afp; ISBN 9780195314359, $22.00. Reviewed in 2008aug CHOICE.
45-6969  E573  2007-5902 CIP

Barney (North Carolina) presents a compelling look at an initially reluctant Confederate who becomes committed to the cause, even as it costs him his health and family ties. Because of his dislike of slaves and slavery, Walter Lenoir considered moving north from North Carolina to Minnesota prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Ultimately, Lincoln’s call for troops pushed Lenoir to join the Confederate Army, and he served until being severely wounded at Ox Hill in August 1862. Barney continues to trace Lenoir’s journey to un-Reconstructed Southerner from his leaving the army to his death in 1890. Relying heavily on family papers and letters, Barney succeeds in bringing Lenoir and his family to life. The notes and bibliography put the work into historical context and provide an excellent reading list for students. One of the work’s many strengths is its presentation of the struggles over Unionism and slavery in the northeastern section of North Carolina. Lenoir was not a stereotypical Southern planter, and his life offers a needed glimpse into the variety of people who populated the 19th-century South. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — K. L. Gorman, Minnesota State University—Mankato

The Civil War: Antebellum Period to Reconstruction.  Readex. For academic libraries, Readex offers a one-time tiered purchase price with an annual maintenance fee.  Internet Resource.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2009may CHOICE.
http://www.readex.com/readex/
46-4788
[Visited Feb’09]

The Civil War is a comprehensive database of Americana covering the antebellum period through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It provides exhaustive information and allows users to fully research this important era of American history. It is divided into three main parts: Historical Newspapers, local and national, including, e.g., speeches, editorials, maps, and cartoons; Congressional Documents from the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980, including maps, slavery statistics, Ku Klux Klan activities, and official records; and Broadsides and Ephemera, from the American Antiquarian Society collection, including “song sheets, poems, and other rare materials.” On the right is a special Civil War Exhibits section with a link to Crossroads, a community for students, teachers, and scholars.
Various options for navigating the database include a search box on the main page and selected links to articles and documents. Extensive help sections are available for each section. Users may conduct a cross-collection search and identify Alternative Battle Names. Where applicable, users may search by truncation, Boolean logic, and various fields; also included are stop words and an automatic plural feature. When searching American Civil War Newspapers, 1840-1877, users may open an expandable search form, search individual newspapers, and use a variety of limiting techniques, including tabs labeled Dates and Eras, Article Types, Languages, Places of Publication, and Newspaper Titles. In the Congressional Civil War Documents section, one may access almost 60,000 documents via basic and advanced, publication, and bill number searches. Users may limit to Tables, Maps, and Illustrations, and browse by tabs labeled Antebellum, War Years, and Reconstruction. One may view results through a combination of Subjects, Geographic Names, and Personal Names. Subjects range from Abolitionists to Wilmot Proviso. Within Civil War Broadsides and Ephemera, one may conduct basic and advanced searches, and also browse approximately 4,500 items by Genre, Subjects, Author, History of Printing, Place of Publication, and Language.
The database allows users to print, download (pages or an entire issue as PDFs), e-mail results, flag articles, save searches, bookmark articles via open-URLs, and export citations. Sample searches were easy, but at times the database loaded slowly, requiring some patience. However, the results are worth the wait. The many available options mean that novice searchers may require some practice. Information about updates and future plans is not available within the database. The Civil War offers excellent coverage of the social, political, and cultural aspects of this momentous time period. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers; general readers. — J. Foreman, Arkansas State University

Grear, Charles David.  Why Texans fought in the Civil War.  Texas A&M, 2010.  239p bibl index afp  (Sam Rayburn series on rural life, 20) ISBN 1-60344-172-7, $30.00; ISBN 9781603441728, $30.00. Reviewed in 2011jan CHOICE.
48-2876  E580  2009-30317 CIP

This well-researched, deftly written book examines a little-considered aspect of Texas participation in the Civil War: why Texans fought in the conflict with ardor and strong commitment. Grear (Prairie View A&M Univ.) mostly focuses on Confederate service, although a few Texans did rally to the Union. The author has currycombed thousands of letters, diaries, memoirs, and journals written by participants to understand why soldiers from the Lone Star state supported the South, especially when Texas was geographically located on the Confederacy’s western edge, had great diversity of population, and military service meant fighting far to the east in areas distant from home. Importantly, the narrative notes that many Texans were recent immigrants to the state, meaning many of them identified with other places eastward across the South. Grear also concludes that an individual soldier’s attachments proved to be the most compelling factor for military service. These included emotional ties based on networks of familiar kinship structures, identity based on southern social institutions, and an immersion in the culture of the South. The book makes an important contribution to understanding Texas and Texans in the Civil War. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. — L. T. Cummins, Austin College

Green, Michael S.  Politics and America in crisis: the coming of the Civil War.  Praeger, 2010.  190p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780275990954, $44.95.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2010oct CHOICE.
48-1061  E459  2009-46113 CIP

Green (College of Southern Nevada) has produced a well-written synthesis that covers all the major political events between 1846 and 1861 that pushed the US to the breaking point. The fast-paced narrative brings to life the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War. The question of whether slavery could grow and be protected was at the heart of what proved to be an inescapable debate. It would be the central issue that inexorably moved the country toward civil conflict. In describing the series of escalating showdowns over slavery, Green covers a wide variety of key events, including efforts to ban slavery in the territories won in the Mexican War, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raids. This highly readable account also focuses on the dramatis personae caught up in these sectional clashes, providing insightful portraits of such leading figures as Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, William Seward, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander H. Stephens, among others. As the author says, his book is intended for undergraduates and general readers, but drawing on the best new scholarship, it is thorough enough to be useful to graduate students and teachers as well. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. — E. M. Thomas, Gordon College

Lightner, David L.  Slavery and the commerce power: how the struggle against the interstate slave trade led to the Civil War.  Yale, 2006.  228p bibl index afp ISBN 0-300-11470-2, $45.00; ISBN 9780300114706, $45.00. Reviewed in 2007sep CHOICE.
45-0458  E442  2006-7377 CIP

Abolitionist politicians considered the domestic slave trade an embarrassing blot on the fabric of US freedom. Though Congress abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1808 and smugglers continued to import Africans until the Civil War, the interstate slave trade symbolized the most egregious aspects of the “peculiar institution.” Historians estimate that between 1830 and 1860, traders exchanged approximately 600,000 slaves in markets from Virginia to Texas. Lightner (Univ. of Alberta) is the first scholar to focus closely on the decades-long attempts by abolitionists to persuade Congress to use its authority over interstate commerce to outlaw the domestic slave trade. From the 1790s to the 1820s, slavery’s opponents gradually espoused the idea of using the commerce power as an antislavery weapon. In the 1830s, through speeches, petitions, and publications, radicals launched a major campaign for federal action against the slave trade. Over time, however, antislavery politicians divided over strategy. While Liberty Party supporters advanced a congressional interdiction of the slave trade, Free-Soilers and Republicans instead opposed the extension of slavery into the federal territories. Nonetheless, following Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, white southerners concluded that the Republicans would outlaw both the slave trade and slavery, and they seceded. Summing Up: Recommended. For all college and university collections. — J. D. Smith, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Manning, Chandra.  What this cruel war was over: soldiers, slavery, and the Civil War.  Knopf, 2007.  350p bibl index; ISBN 9780307264824, $26.95. Reviewed in 2008feb CHOICE.
45-3391  E607  2006-48733 CIP

In a thoroughly researched and well-written narrative, Manning (Georgetown) explores how Civil War soldiers–white and black–identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. Although Lincoln made such a link quite plain in his Second Inaugural, the general public and generations of academic historians, not all of them white Southerners, have tended to ignore what the participants in the Civil War plainly said was the crux of the issues that divided North and South. Using a trove of soldiers’ letters and diaries, Manning shows the myriad ways in which white Northern soldiers came to view abolition as the price of peace, even as Southern soldiers–most of whom owned no slaves–tied slavery to their mental model of a divinely ordered universe, and black troops saw the ending of slavery as a springboard toward social and legal equality. In an otherwise well-documented book, Manning does not assist uninitiated readers in placing soldiers’ statements in an historical context. Many Northern soldiers believed slavery caused the war, but directed their anger toward Southern slave power, while other soldiers believed slavery was a moral evil. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. — E. R. Crowther, Adams State College

Miner, Craig.  Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the national news, 1854-1858.  University Press of Kansas, 2008.  305p bibl index afp ISBN 0-7006-1612-8, $34.95; ISBN 9780700616121, $34.95. Reviewed in 2009aug CHOICE.
46-7001  F685  2008-14480 CIP

Miner (Wichita State Univ.) takes a novel approach in reporting the events of Bleeding Kansas between 1854 and 1858. Sampling from numerous newspapers, the author steps away from the traditional event telling of Bleeding Kansas and demonstrates the importance that reporting these events had on shaping the pre-Civil War era. Accordingly, these editorials created the drama and hostilities between North and South far more than the actual events themselves. Miner’s collection of quotes and articles provides a new insight into the coming of the US Civil War. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — M. A. Byron, University of Arkansas

Ratner, Lorman A.  Fanatics and fire-eaters: newspapers and the coming of the Civil War, by Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr.  Illinois, 2003.  138p index afp ISBN 0-252-02787-6, $34.95. Reviewed in 2003oct CHOICE.
41-1132  E459  2002-6415 CIP

Why did hostilities leading to the Civil War begin in 1861? Historians Ratner (Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) and Teeter (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) agree that six major events transpired between 1856 and 1861, a compressed chronology that shook the fabric of union and the confidence of Americans, both North and South: the Sumner-Brooks affair, the Dred Scott decision, the Lecompton constitution, the raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln’s election, and the fall of Ft. Sumter. But why had not equally fractious disagreements between the sections previously torn the nation asunder? The authors trace the rise and evolving power of national newspapers such as Greeley’s Tribune and Bennett’s World as the reason for disparate positions on the question of slavery. Nor was the rhetoric isolated in the large city mass media. Arguments excerpted from newspapers located in cities from Cincinnati to New Orleans and from Richmond to Philadelphia created a negative atmosphere that identified abolitionist writers as “fanatics” and proslavery journalists as “fire-eaters.” The growing mass media fed hateful points of view that only served to intensify mass hysteria and hate to an already opinionated public. Ratner and Teeter have marshaled their arguments well to create a valid thesis. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/collections. — J. D. Born Jr., Wichita State University

Schoen, Brian.  The fragile fabric of Union: cotton, federal politics, and the global origins of the Civil War.  Johns Hopkins, 2009.  369p index afp ISBN 0-8018-9303-8, $55.00; ISBN 9780801893032, $55.00. Reviewed in 2010feb CHOICE.
47-3389  F213  2008-50560 CIP

The best way to begin this review is to quote from the book’s epilogue. Schoen (Ohio Univ.) contrasts the various romantic interpretations of the Old South with his conclusions: “These postwar explanations had little … basis in historic fact. Antebellum residents of the Lower South [were] inextricably materialist in their outlook, greedily looking for ways to protect their near monopoly in raw cotton and expand their commercial and industrial capacity.” The author reaches this conclusion by keeping focus on cotton growers, especially in the lower South, and the politics that they produced. Schoen’s chronological approach in five chapters develops his arguments and does a masterful job of keeping the focus on cotton, its politics, its exploitation of slaves, and ultimately the self-delusions of the cotton states vis-^D`à-vis the world. Many readers will perhaps better understand why so many secessionists really believed that King Cotton diplomacy was a sure bet. An excellent book on all counts. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. – 
I. Cohen, emeritus, Illinois State University

Varon, Elizabeth R.  Disunion!: the coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859.  North Carolina, 2008.  455p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780807832325, $30.00. Reviewed in 2009oct CHOICE.
47-1062  E302 2008-15677 MARC

In this inaugural volume of a projected 16 in the publisher’s “Littlefield History of the Civil War Era” series, Varon (Temple Univ.) revisits and revises the tortured terrain of slavery and union from the early republic to the aftermath of John Brown’s Raid. By depicting disunion as a rhetoric of prophecy, threat, accusation, process, and program that allowed politicians and partisans to depict themselves as defenders and their opponents as disruptors of the “American experiment,” Varon compellingly shows how slavery “encompassed” the debate over the meaning of liberty, the Constitution, and future of the US. Her argument provides a useful bridge in the historiography between those who believe secession and civil war were inevitable, and those who believe that contingency hijacked an erstwhile-united population and drove one element in it toward secession. Although white and black Americans professed a devotion to the Union as a transcendent idea, white Americans proved unable to agree on the place of slavery in the actual Union as its status was continuously debated in the welter of political and moral events of the antebellum era. This is highly readable political, social, and intellectual history at its best. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. –
E. R. Crowther, Adams State College

Walther, Eric H.  William Lowndes Yancey and the coming of the Civil War.  North Carolina, 2006.  477p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8078-3027-5, $39.95; ISBN 9780807830277, $39.95. Reviewed in 2006dec CHOICE.
44-2315  E415  2005-37964 CIP

In this valuable biography of Yancey, a leader of the Southern movement of secession from the Union, Walther (Univ. of Houston) provides a better understanding of how strongly some political leaders from the Old South felt about States’ Rights, the Union, and slavery from the 1830s until the Civil War. For Yancey, “the great menace in 1855” was neither the new Republican Party of the North nor Kansas, but the success of the American Party, the Know-Nothing party that replaced the Whig Party in some southern states, including Yancey’s Alabama. The Know-Nothings challenged Alabama Democrats and signaled a growing evil and intolerance across the nation. Yancey opposed them because they advocated the maintenance of the Union as “the paramount political good.” They were the latest manifestation of Federalism. Yancey believed that life in the South was proper and good. Using a biblical phrase long before Abe Lincoln, he declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” A worthwhile and well-researched addition serving libraries interested in the history of the South and the coming of the Civil War. Summing Up: Recommended. General collections and upper-division undergraduates and above. — H. M. Druks, City University of New York Brooklyn College