Customer Reviews

The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861

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If you like Freehings Road to disunion volume I: Secessionists at bay, then you wan't be sorry getting volume II. It is written in the same style and with great analysis. You can just pick this up where you left part one. Just like volume I had many topics and events that have not been included in other antebellum histoybooks, this volume offers a lot of fresh insights about the storming 1850:s that other books miss. This book must be considered, if not the best general history of the south during theese years, one of the top 3 best. If you are interested in the pre civil war era...don't miss this book!!

I have read both volumes of Professor Freehling's "Road to Disunion" and this review is intended to apply to both volumes. I consider his work to be of the highest scholarship, impeccably researched, and very informative. Unfortunately, Professor Freehling's writing style seems to indicate that his work was prepared more for the perusal of his fellow Ph.D's than for the reading public. It is lamentable for those having an interest in this period of our history that he did not take a cue from writers and historians of this era such as Shelby Foote, Douglas Southall Freeman, Carl Sandburg, Allan Nevins, and Bruce Catton whose works are highly informative but at the same time very readable, flowing, actually entertaining.

One has to actually experience Professor Freehling's sentences and paragraphs to appreciate the difficulty of grasping some of them. He seems never to have met a suffix--and few prefixes--which he did not like. Social and political factions, groups, and sub-groups are inevitably named and labelled resulting in an exponential proliferation of nouns such as Secessionists, Unionists, Dis-unionists, Separatists, Cooperationists, Abolitionists, Borderites, Paternalists, Egalitarianists, Nativists, ex-Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, Calhounism, Van Burenites, etc., ad infinitum. More than a few casual readers will likely find that a glossary, however sophomoric it might seem to Professor Freehling, would be helpful. I found myself reading many sentences two, three, even four times before feeling satisfied that I had grasped the intended meaning. Several entire paragraphs, after being subjected to similar scrutiny, were simply abandoned as I moved on through the work, resigned that, if I should ever be able to digest them, it simply would not be worth the effort.

On a substantive note, Professor Freehling, especially in Volume II, appears to conclude that the proponents of slavery, in their efforts to defend and protect their "peculiar institution" infringed and trampled upon the "Republicanism" of other whites, and tended thereby even to enslave such whites. He seems to offer this conclusion as an explanation for the fervor which opponents of slavery brought to the struggle against it. The primary example offered of such infringement of "Republican" rights is that for a number of years, the Democratic Party was controlled by a minority centered in the lower south, and that through the Democratic Party, then the major party in the nation, this southern minority in effect exercised control over a nationwide majority, thereby infringing upon the "Republican" right of majority rule. Other more concrete examples of infringement of "rights" were southern efforts to "gag" and censor abolitionist communication designed to agitate and incite resistance to slavery in the south, and actual violence offered to those inclined to go in person among slaves and non-slaveholding whites for such purposes. Southerners felt justified in such action by the basic necessity of self-preservation due to the omnipresent threat of slave violence, a threat which would be exacerbated if violent tendencies should be inflamed by agitation.

It is unimaginable to me that any Yankee soldier--indeed anyone opposed to the South and/or slavery--in the Civil War ever said or thought that his (or her) "Republicanism" was threatened by the South or that any white person was in danger of enslavement by the South. Even if Professor Freehling's conclusion is considered as merely an articulation of some unspoken visceral reaction to slaveholders, what purpose is served by such a contrived articulation? Is it the result of academic pressure to forever derive and construct some new insight or theory upon one of the most studied and exposed eras of history? If the people who lived in that era did not articulate their views in such terms, and if nobody else in modern society considers the matter in such terms, what is the value of expounding upon history in such contrived fashion?

My conclusion is that Professor Freehling's somewhat strained efforts to bring new insights to an old story have rendered his telling of the story unnecessarily difficult to follow. I do recommend reading his work, but I would not recommend that the casual reader plunge into it without some prior familiarization with the history of the era. Potter's "The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861" may be considered one of the leading works on the subject prior to the publication of "Road to Disunion", and the casual reader might be well-advised to take them in chronological order of publication.

Seventeen years ago Freehling's Road to Disunion Vol. I was published and we Freehling fans have been impatient for this book to come out. It has been along wait but worth it. Professor Freehling has outdone himself on Road II. If there is a problem with this book it is that you can't afford to "skip" a paragraph because you think you know all about the subject. You find a fact, a thought, or a conclusion you never thought of before. Thid book is surely the crowning jewel in Wm. Freehling's bejeweled crown. Thank you, Dr. Freehling.

Barrie W. Bracken, Researcher

I don't think it would be unfair to say that the scholarship of William Freehling is focused on an idée fixe: that the antebellum American South was deeply divided against itself, that those divisions lie at the heart of the South's actions, and are the root of that most dramatic, momentous event in America's 19th century - secession.

The most important divide for Freehling is the ideological rift between two conflicting American traditions: the 18th century Paternalism of America's Aristocratic Founders, and the 19th century democratic ideology of the revolution they've created. This is why Freehling's magnum opus, The Road to Disunion, started in 1776: With the American Revolution, a new conception of liberty and equality rose to prominence side-by-side with the older tradition. It would be an exaggeration, but only a modest one, to say that, for Freehling, the Civil War was the final confrontation between these ideologies.

Freehling's description of the clash of ideologies, 18th century Paternalism versus 19th century Herrenvolk Democracy, is most explicitly made in his brilliant essay collection, The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War. But although the conflict is less explicitly described in the present volume (I don't think Freehling uses the word "Herrenvolk" anywhere in the text), it is actually made much clearer. To put it simply, the 19th century conception of Democracy was based on the idea that all white men were equal; but in a slaveholding Society, Slaveholders were more equal than non slaveholders.

The point is not merely the by now familiar one that White Northerners found themselves threatened by the "Slave Power". The more interesting thesis is that the same dynamic was working itself out in the South. Although ostensibly the defender of slavery and the South, the democratic ideology, heralded by Jefferson's declaration of Independence and consolidated in Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party, actually threatened it. The Democracy was built around the ideology of race: All White Men were created equal. But in a slaveholding society, masters were more equal than non-slaveholding Whites. They had to be - how otherwise could they protect their precious, brittle institution?

For Slavery's apparent strength was misleading - it was a system depending on a framework of laws and attitudes maintaining it, suppressing and controling not just Blacks but also the Whites who might wish to undermine it. Without strong actions against Fugitives, slaves would become a precarious investment. Fearing slaves' flight, sabotage, or worse - murder of their masters - slavers could not allow "agitation" against slavery - so Speech had to be suppressed. Without laws protecting it, slavery could not be safe in the Federal Territories, and Slaveholders would not risk taking their slaves there - thus, a Federal Slave Code had to be enacted in the Territories, whether the inhabitants of those territories wanted it or not.

You may call this the Slaveholding Predicament - the "whiter" and "freer" a slaveholding state became, the less Democratic it could be. The non-slaveholding class may very well feel it had no stakes in the complicated apparatus designed to keep slavery in place, and may turn against slavery. The brittleness of slavery required suppression of Democracy to protect the Peculiar Institution.

Secession - living in a country that was blacker and more slaveholding - proved the only way Antebellum Southerners could resolve this Predicament. Freehling documents the failures of other schemes to transcend that Paradox, whether adventurism in pursuit of more slavery-friendly land in Caribbean America, the reopening of the Slave Trade, or the re-enslavement of Free Blacks (the latter two would create new slaveholders, thus giving more Southerners a stake in the Peculiar Institution). All of these projects failed. As these possible schemes for reducing the conflict between the security of slavery and the demands of democracy failed, Southerners tried to get a tighter than ever control over the White man's democracy - leading to a series of Confrontations between the North and South. But the Southern control of the American Democracy ended with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Failing to reconcile the two ideologies, the South was now thrust into the 19th century - living in a country where the majority of non-slaveholders have finally wrestled the power away from the masters. Secession was the only way - a mad, dangerous and reckless only way, to be sure - of trying to derail slavery's headlong march towards eventual annihilation.

By the 1850s, the North was lost to Slaveholders. But the South, too, was far from solid. I didn't know that even before the 1860 election, the Republican Party had a Southern wing; In fact, the support of delegates from several southern states, especially Missouri, was vital for Lincoln's election as the Republican candidate. With the full power of the Federal Government behind them, the Southern Republican party's power would only increase. How soon before the abolitionist heresy would spread in the South? How soon before the non-Slaveholding Southerners would turn against the Slaveholders' rule?

"The Road to Disunion: vol. 2" is well written, at times riveting, although Freehling has not shed his enthusiasm for irritating homilies ("true blue" is especially abused, but the book also features such pearls as "the question hung like a soaking blanket atop South Carolinians' desperation for disunion" p. 376). Stylistically, its greatest weakness is the book's pacing. You hardly feel the rush of dramatic events; rather I felt like I was watching a frozen picture, with great clarity but little energy. This is worst during Freehling's narration of the secession crisis - what should have been the climax of the two volumes is one of the work's least dynamic parts, as Freehling repeats, at great length, his main thesis.

For Secession was the ultimate anti-Democratic act by the Southerners, the final revolution against the White Man's Rule. If the White men refused to go along the Paternalist's demands, the Paternalists won't play. They have finally overcome the democratic ideology, and formed their paternalistic utopia, where the Slaveholder's rights would be secure.

As much as the Slaveholders may have wanted to turn back the clock, the task proved beyond their power. The ideology of the future would reassert itself. And Freehling's books ends as it is beginning to do so, no longer with votes, agitation and moral suasion, but with the full might of the modern war machine.

I appreciate Dr. Freehling's comments (in the Preface) that this is not just an academic history, but a readable book. I feel that he is right (and wrong) on both counts. This is a DEFINITIVE academic history of 1854-1861, but there is no context of Southern (or Southron) culture as in the first Road to Disunion book, and so this book does not stand well on its own, independent of the first volume.
It is also not a "readable" book. There is no narrative flow. It is simply a series of dissertations on minor persons and incidents chopped up chronologically or by theme (Four men named John?(!)). There is no sense of a cascade of events here. John G. Fee (who?) gets as many pages as John Brown. It is impressive that Dr. Freehling is able to immerse himself in the minutia of proslavery (or religious, or economic, or political, etc) arguments of the 1850s, but not terribly interesting or enlightening.
I teach a college class, Why We Fight: American Civil War, so I feel qualified in saying that if you are a Civil War fanatic, you will find some undiscovered jewels here, the evolution and change of proslavery tracts being but one example. If however, you are a more casual reader of American history, there is little here to draw your attention or sustain it. Freehling is, in every sense, exhaustive.

I was a big fan of Freehling's first volume, but I believe the second volume is even better than its predecessor. Perhaps this is because Freehling devotes so many pages to a shorter time period so you get a fuller picture of what was going on. Or perhaps it is because of the fact that Freehling did so much research and uncovered interesting stories that had previously been skipped over. Whatever the reason, if you are interested in the causes of the Civil War or 19th century American history, pick this up. Freehling's writing style is unique, but I didn't find it detrimental at all.

As a previous reviewer commented,this book is not for the casual reader who wishes to familiarize him/herself with the issues which presaged the Civil War. It is truly exhaustive with regard to historical detail & minutae. I found it fascinating in the amount of knowledge I was able to pick up that was completely new to me. That said,this is not a volume that one casually speed reads in three or so days. My only criticism is that I feel the author was too harsh in his evaluation of James Buchannon. However,that's what makes interpriting history so exciting. I'd recommend this book highly-just make sure you're in a comfortable chair with plenty of time to devote to reading it.

This very interesting pair of books comprise a close analysis of antebellum Southern political history and the forces that led to secession. The basic theme is the contradiction of slavery in republican and increasingly democratic society. Against this background, Freehling is particularly interested in demonstrating the diversity of Southern society and Southern politics and their evolution over the decades prior to the Civil War. Freehling shows the existence of several gradients in the South. The most important was a North-South gradient with slavery and cotton cultivation increasingly important in the deep South. The farther north, the fewer slaves and greater likelihood of anti-slavery attitudes, and Nothern style politics. There were also east-west gradients. The older, coastal slave regions, particularly eastern Virginia and South Carolina, tended to be strongholds of elitist politics, deferential social attitudes, and relative economic decline. The more economically dynamic cotton southwest of much of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas, and the sugar regions of Louisiana were characterized by frontier capitalism and at least for white men, egalitarian politics. There were also significant divisions within many Southern states; eastern and western Virginia, eastern and western Tennessee, northern and southern Arkansas. Finally, Freehling devotes many pages to close analyses of South Carolina, a state with a distinctive political culture dominated by a backward looking and distinctly anti-democratic planter squirearchy.

The contradictions of slavery in a democracy and the heterogeneity of the South left many Southern leaders with a strong sense of a society under siege. In Volume 1, Secessionists at Bay, Freehling expands on the sense of insecurity which he argues was further reinforced by some of the basic features of slavery, notably the fear of slave unrest. In the early 19th century, the international movement against the slave trade in Britain and the erosion of slavery in the North, which many Southerners feared would be reproduced in the border and upper South, reinforced the fears of the decline of Southern society. Southern security was bulwarked somewhat by some of the peculiarities of the American political system, such as the 3/5th rule and equal representation of states in the Senate, and which for much of the 19th century allowed it a dominant role in American politics. With the growth of the North, these advantages were gradually lost, and Southern leaders pursued varying strategies, most centered in the Democratic party, to maintain Southern power.

Freehling moves well through the antebellum period, with nice narratives and analyses of major political events, often showing very well how state, regional, and national politics interacted. The political analysis is Freehling's forte, with consistently interesting analyses of politics that stress the continuity of Southern politics. The sense of insecurity of the South recurs frequently, often with deleterious adverse consequences. Southern efforts to defend slavery, sometimes in response to minimal or no provocation, led to what were perceived both in North and within much of the South as suppression of white democratic rights. The gag rule controversy, suppression of political dissidence in the south, the efforts to repeal the Missouri compromise, all resulted in Northern and border South reaction against the South. Another important theme is the importance of racist anti-slavery feelings, both in the North and South. Finally, in contrast to frequent claims (though not by knowledgeable historians) that the South merely wanted to be left alone and was a bastion of "states rights," Freehling shows well how the South used the Federal government, national political system, and how some Southern leaders actively sought dissolution of the Union. Freehling is perhaps less good on some other important points - there is relatively little coverage of economic history, which at times appears to be quite important. The product of a prodigious amount of research, his thoughtful analyses are convincing and this is a rich account of antebellum America.

At times, however, Freehling's interest in comprehensive analysis tends to overwhelm the narrative. Volume I, in particular, could have been shorter without impairing the integrity of these books. There is probably more of South Carolina politics in these books than anyone (except Freehling) would want to know. Freehling is a solid but not gifted writer and parts of these books are written in an excessively enthusiastic and sometimes mannered style. Volume 2, Secessionists Triumphant, is shorter and the writing is more direct. A slightly unusual and successful feature is that Freehling sometimes develops interesting counterfactual speculations. He argues well, for example, for the importance of the ban on the importation of slaves in 1807, developing a convincing scenario in which the trajectory of American history would have been very different. He argues also that without the Civil War, slavery would have persisted much longer, a frightening thought. Abolition was an ironic result of secession.

I was a little bit disappointed because the book lacked a fair bit of context. For example, I know that a Senator from South Carolina preferred his slave concubine to his wife, but otherwise I would have to read another book to really understand what was going on. So, I appreciated the mini-biographies of the players leading up to the war, but I felt that there was a huge hole in my understanding of 1854 - 1861.

I'm going to steal a 1-line review I saw elsewhere, on another site:

"Even 150 years later, the South is irritating me."

And that's how I felt reading the second volume of Freehling's antebellum political history.