★★★★★ 4
An important contribution
The historiography of secession is a complex one. For much of the last century there had been a tendency for historians to underplay the importance of slavery as a cause of the American civil war. Certaintly neo-Confederate apologists have sought to euphemize the cause of the conflict to an issue over tariffs, to matters of states rights, or to the "extremism" of the abolitionists. It is quite clear that these excuses will not survive a reading of this book. Sinha clearly shows, in her examination of South Carolina secessionism from nullifaction to fort Sumter, that slavery was the essence of its concerns. To show this she looks at the nullification crisis, the Mexican war, the Compromise of 1850, the South Carolinian movement to reopen the slave trade, and the secession crisis, based on exhaustive research of no less than 137 sets of private papers and diaries.
But Sinha wishes not simply to refute the academically unimportant group of neo-Calhounites. She wishes to argue something broader. The South Carolinian defense of slavery was not, as many serious historians suggest today, simply the working out of the Southern American view of liberty. Increasingly, Sinha argues, South Carolina pro-slavery thought was not the expression of Southern Republicanism, but increasingly its very negation. It was not a coincidence that secessionism was strongest in South Carolina, the only state by 1832 where presidential electors and the governor were not popularly elected, where the legislature was crudely malapportioned, and where local offices were limited by the state government. It was also not a coincidence that slaves were a majority of South Carolinians, and slaveholders nearly a majority of South Carolinian whites. And it certainly was not a coincidence that non-slaveholders were noticeably less enthusiastic for nullification, secession in 1851 and secession in 1861.
But although Southern nationalist discourse was clearly elitist and pro-slavery, does Sinha show that it was counter-revolutionary? A certain opposition to democracy was evident after all in the many, perhaps most, of the founding fathers. But as Sinha points out leading Carolinians like Calhoun, Senator James Chesnut and the creepy, incestuous James Hammond all sneered at the Declaration of Independence. She quotes one bravado warping PatricK Henry to declare "Give me Slavery or give me death." Notwithstanding the views of some historians to the contrary the South Carolinians criticized the North less for its oppression of wage laborers than the possiblity that those laborers could vote themselves into power. They did not condemn Lincoln as an intolerant Protestant but as a dangerous socialist and feminist. Moreover, they were not slow to raise the Nativist card against the immigrants who were bolstering the North's population. Calhoun's idea of a concurrent majority was not a thoughtful protection of minority rights, but a way to prevent one minority, his own, from ever being outvoted. Once the Confederacy was set up the elite dispensed with political parties. Looking at South Carolina they also began to dispense with competitive elections, while its ruthless elite certainly did not act sentimentally (or even decently) towards opinions on slavery.
In conclusion there have been many frauds and bullies in American political life: the Nixons, the Hoovers, the McCarthys, the Tillmans and the Bilbos. But much of their malignancy was purely personal and they never threatened the core ideals of the republic. Calhoun was different, very different. Extremely intelligent, he was also utterly principled, and absolutely ruthless in carrying out that one principle. The problem was that the principle, despite all the complications of honor and paternalism, was slavery. More so than anyone else, Calhoun was the greatest enemy of liberty and freedom the United States ever had. Sinha's book is an important contribution to understanding that.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2000
