Customer Reviews

Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877

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I was enthralled by this tour around America during such a critical period of development. McDougall is a respected, decorated academic historian and brings this professional authority to the pages. However, this book is fabulous for amateurs like me, interested in history but not in pursuit of a Ph.D. The myriad of social and cultural elements are what make this a fascinating study. Most history tomes focus on political aspects, as this certainly addresses. But I like reading about things that are less well-known--people, domestic habits, inventions, social things. To name a few in McDougall's book: the invention of photography, women desiring fine china starting in the 1820s, saloons in Chicago, Lincoln wondering what to do with the freed slaves, the age of steel, railroads, pioneer trails to the West, water supply, all the stuff that typical political history books miss.

While "Throes of Democracy" is 600 pages with terrific maps, it's a rapid trip, easy to read with lots of juicy stories and details. There are 144 pages of footnotes which I'm sure the academics require, and some of them are enlightening, but I didn't need them. I have read a few of the author's previous books and this is the best one yet.

Professor Walter McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania develops his understanding of American history as a "tale of human nature set free" throughout his lengthy study "Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829 -- 1876" (2008). This book is the second of three volumes devoted to a history of the United States. The first volume "Freedom just around the Corner" covers the period 1585 -- 1828 while the third volume has not yet appeared. McDougall is a scholar in love with the United States but deeply conscious of its paradoxes. Further setting the tone for his history, he writes in his Preface "I believe the United States (so far) is the greatest success story in history. I believe Americans (on balance) are experts at self-deception. And I believe the 'creative corruption born ot their pretense goes far to explain their success. The upshot is that American history is chock-full of cruelty and love, hypocrisy and faith, cowardice and courage, plus no small measure of tounge in cheek humor." McDougall says he has written his history with two broad rules in mind: avoid cant (he uses a more earthy term) and and "write as if you are already dead." On the whole, he follows through. McDougall writes from a philosophical/religious perspective which I will discuss below.

The book begins and nearly ends with fire. It opens with a description of an 1835 fire in New York City which destroyed lower Manhattan. And one of the last sections of the book tells of the great Chicago fire of 1871 which gutted much of the city. In both cases, McDougall finds that the cities rose from their ashes through the energy and untrammelled efforts of individuals and community. The fires became blessings as old structures were burned away and entrepeneurs rebuilt the cities to be more powerful, energetic, and corrupt than they were before the catastrophies. The drive for power and wealth combined with civic improvement as McDougall repeats his theme that many Americans of differing perspectives tried to "do good by doing well."

The history proper begins with the presidency of Andrew Jackson, continues through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and concludes with the compromise of 1876 which resulted in the election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency and ended Reconstruction. This is a great deal of widely different materials to handle in a single volume. McDougall's narrative is frequently disjointed. Especially in the first part of the history, the period before the Civil War, McDougall tends to slight the political history of the period. The reader doesn't get a convincing view of the long history of events leading to secession and conflict. What McDougall offers instead is a picture of what he describes as hustling -- a theme which he finds characterizes American life. It is a story of individuals rich and poor devoted to their own individual welfare who use their freedom in the widest possible ways in the attempt to realize their individual dreams. It is a story of con-men, entrepeneurs, writers, capitalists, farmers, circus performers, soldiers, builders. McDougall tells the story of a nation on the make. He also finds it a story lacking an overriding sense of national purpose and meaning, which he finds the great shortcoming to date of American life.

Many historians see the Civil War as the pivotal event in American history but McDougall does not. He sees a continuity in events before and after the Civil War in that the basic nature of American life, individualism and hustling remained essentially in place as what McDougall terms America's civic religion of individualism. So, he argues (mistakenly)that at the outest of his administration, Abraham Lincoln tried to follow the temporizing, compromising posture of Buchanan until events proved the hollowness of this approach. The country lacked a stable frame of reference and authority, McDougall argues, and was instead a land of competing forces in which individual goals were projected on the nation as a whole. Among American writers, McDougall severely criticizes Emerson and Thoreau, not, indeed, for being money driven, but for fostering an ethic of radical individualism that McDougall finds essentially mirrored the individualism already in place. The corruption and failure of Reconstruction was also due for McDougall to lack of national resolve. The age following Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, was corrupt and venial, but it also made America the most materially successful nation the world had ever seen.

Some of the stronger elements of this book lie in the details: in the portraits of individuals well-known and little known, and in its scenes of the pace and notoriety of urban life in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere. McDougall admires Herman Melville. I appreciated his use of quotations from Melville's still under-valued collection of Civil War poems, "Battle-Pieces" to frame his treatments of Civil War combats. McDougall punctuates his narrative with short insert histories of each state admitted to the Union during the time frame of his study beginning with Arkansas in 1836 and ending with Colorado in 1876. These inserts are written in a reflective, almost poetical style and capture something of the individuals who formed and populated each of the states. The book is generally written in a colloquial, down-to-earth, informal style. The endnotes are important to read.

The hero of McDougall's study does not appear until the concluding section of the book in the person of Orestes Brownson (1803-1876). Brownson was a seeker in the best tradition of American individual beginning as a transcendentalist and ultimately converting to Roman Catholicism. With this conversion, Brownson, for McDougall, became a profound critic of American individualism. For McDougall, Brownson showed that the spirit of individualism was chaos and selfishness writ large. From Emerson to the most agressive financier or huckster, Americans confused their own desires for power and wealth with the nature of America. McDougall advocates for what today is called communitarianism, but his approach is even broader. He argues that individualism fails and needs a source of authority outside the scope of human reason or the human person. This authority is generally thought to be religious and is described by the term Revelation. Neither Brownson nor McDougall expected or desired Americans to adopt Catholicism or any other single religion. But as the book progresses, McDougall's claim that American individualism needs to be reshaped to acknowledge a source of authority outide the self and that this authority is ordinarily and best found in religion becomes increasingly prominent. This position is put forward at length in the discussion of Brownson and in McDougall's concluding quotation from a religious skeptic, Frederick Douglass.

"I hold that the pulpit is capable of being a powerful agent in the dissemination of truth, and I hold that truth is the power of God for the salvation of the world, and I do not limit truth to mere spiritual matters, but to man in all his relations in the family, in the church, in the government, and in the world." (p. 610)

More a philosophical than a political or social history, McDougall's book has its limitations. But it offers a provocative, thoughtful view of the American experience.

Robin Friedman

The first two reviewers of Walter McDougall's masterpiece of prose are sharply divided in their views. My take on this historical romp through the mid 1850's is that McDougall was looking to pick an argument with each and every one of his readers. There is something here for each of us to cherish and to question.
First, McDougall's biting wit and scathing comments on the people and events of the day make page-turning reading. He treats monumental and small events with the same degree of scrutiny. He has made me reconsider some of my views on the mid 19th century. I am currently gathering materials for a book on a very narrow topic of the Civil War period. I hope I can tell my story with just a smidgen of the insight that he has used to tell his.
Dr. McDougall, thanks for making me reconsider my approach to historical writing. At its best, history is challenging and fun. You make it fun. I encourage anyone who hated history in high school to read this book. You will be pleasantly surprised, and most likely will order volume 1 of the series. I can't wait until the next installment.

The author of the acclaimed "Freedom Just Around the Corner" is back with volume two of his "New American History." After tracing the theme of "hustling" in the initial volume, McDougall changes his tune a mite, choosing this time to focus on the idea of "pretense." To wit, antebellum American politics and social structures had a consistent tendency to sidestep urgent national issues (slavery above all) until both sides got tired of telling lies to one another. We still meet a fair number of "hustlers," though, especially in McDougall's enjoyable series of miniature histories of the various states, written in the order in which the states entered the Union. It's a fairly quick read that repays repeat visits. I just hope that McDougall doesn't try to cover the rest of the territory in the third volume.

This is the second volume in Walter McDougall's history of the United States from the beginning of British settlement. I read the first, but it made no impression on me, and I remember little from it. However, I found this volume to be outstanding. McDougall's knowledge of this period in American history is encyclopedic; and he uses his knowledge to create a rounded description and analysis of political, economic, social, literary, and technological developments.
By "rounded" I do not mean impartial. McDougall relishes debunking icons, whether they are Emerson and Thoreau (pages 219-22) or Andrew Jackson (pages 68-76).
However, McDougall is more interested in conveying (with great success) the excitement and grandeur of American growth and the greatness of the inventors and entrepreneurs who made that growth possible. He fully justifies his assertions (pages xii, 563) that the United States has been "the greatest success story in history" and "the most dynamic nation on earth."
I have read a great deal about the history of technology, but it was McDougall's infectious enthusiasm (pages 135-6, 143-5) that made me realize for the first time that the introduction of railroads in the 1830s and the telegraph in the 1840s may have changed the way people lived and thought more thoroughly and more suddenly than any other technological innovations in history.
His description of the wonderful contributions of business tycoons is especially important because the characterization of the industrialists of the post-Civil-War era as "robber barons" (from a book published in 1934 with that name) still persists, even though it was refuted long ago. (As ardent a champion of the free market as the Economist magazine recently referred to Andrew Carnegie as a robber baron.) McDougall's summary of Carnegie's and Rockefeller's careers (pages 558-9) is worth quoting:
"[L]argely under his [Carnegie's] aegis steel production rose from 20,000 tons in 1867 to more than 1 million tons by 1879 even as the price dropped from $166 to $45 per ton. Steel made railroad tracks stronger and cheaper. Steel ... made possible skyscrapers ... Steel put cheap, superior tools and utensils into everyone's hands.... [T]he question remains whether any other capitalist, much less a socialist commissar, could have built the U.S. steel industry as quickly and as well as Carnegie did."
"Like Carnegie, he [Rockefeller] focused on quality standards, cost control, the best science and management, and vertical integration. ... [L]argely under his aegis oil production rose from 8,500 barrels in 1859 to more than 26 million barrels by 1879, while prices declined from $16 per barrel in 1860 to less than $1 by 1879 ... He is lauded for philanthropic donations totalling $540 million. But his greatest gift was oil: for illumination, lubrication, paints, dyes, and all products of organic chemistry from fertilizer to aspirin."
McDougall also interspersed his history with fascinating and important facts. For example (page 561), in 1871, for the first time, US exports exceeded imports, mostly because of food from the Midwest. US exports continued to exceed imports until well after World War II. And (page 8) the ultra-luxurious Astor House, completed in 1836, had over 300 gas-lit rooms, a dining room with 30 entrees a day and baths and toilets on every corridor (not in every room).
Now for criticisms: Unlike reviewer Robin Friedman, I could find no purpose or relevance in the twenty-two pages on Orestes Brownson with which McDougall ends his history.
In both this and the previous volume, he gives a few-page description of each state as it was admitted to the Union. I found these descriptions interesting and valuable in the first volume. But I thought those in this volume were too folksy and chatty.
Errors of fact are inevitable in a book of this length and scope. I found three. On page 260, McDougall says that the election of 1844 was the first presidential campaign fought primarily over foreign policy. In fact, impassioned differences with regard to the French Revolution and whether the USA should ally with France or Britain were crucial political issues from the 1790s until the defeat of Napoleon. Indeed, McDougall points out first volume (page 401) that the Embargo of 1808 was the central issue in the election of 1808 and (page 413) the War of 1812 in the election of 1812. On page 380, McDougall states that Douglas won the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. I do not understand how anyone who reads them could think that. More importantly, that is not just a modern impression. It was the Republicans who published them as a book, which they circulated widely during the campaign of 1860. On page 567, McDougall says "Republicans led by Samuel Tilden" fought the Tweed Ring. Tilden did lead the battle against the Tweed Ring; but, as McDougall knows, he was a Democrat. Either "Republican" is a mistake, or the sentence is awkwardly worded.
I also found two contradictions. The numbers that McDougall gives for the population of Texas before it won independence are: 2,500 Mexicans (page 78); more than 22,000 White Anglos and 1,100 slaves in 1831 (page 79); and 5,000 Mexicans and 30,000 Anglos in 1830 (page 80). On page 110, he says that in 1850, the Southern states contained 27 percent of the population of the United States; on page 111, he says that in 1850, the free states contained 58 percent of the USA' population and 67 percent of its Whites.
Incidentally, reviewer Mitch Deerfield's criticism is wrong. McDougall (page 403) correctly says that the Republicans voted against the Crittenden Compromise.

McDougall's "Throes of Democracy" is a good introduction to the period of American history commencing with the inauguration of Andrew Jackson and ending with the final year of Reconstruction. It may have its flaws (discussed further below) but overall I think this work earns three stars. McDougall offers some very interesting insights into the mindset of the most noted Americans figures of the day and the American populace in general. He attempts to survey the gamut of forces and ideas that influenced American society and Americans in general before the Civil War and performs this task admirably well in certain respects. His writing style is also quite enjoyable and I found the book entertaining and a pleasure to read.

However, I have two major problems with the work. First, McDougall did not make use enough of the extensive primary sources available from the period, an incomprehensible lapse for someone who teaches history as a profession. It's one thing to cite to secondary sources to describe the historiography and impressions left to later generations of a period, person, or event, but to rely on secondary sources to document events, trends, etc. as extensively as done here can and does undermine the work's credibility. Second, while McDougall provides in depth coverage of many of the religious, philosophical, social, intellectual and educational movements of the day, he provides almost no real discussion of the single greatest constitutional and political question of the day: the relationship of the states to the Federal government and whether any state had the power to voluntarily secede from the Union. This was the central question of the Civil War and the issue for which both sides fought in that conflict. Additionally, the state of slavery as it existed in this period and its role in the US national economy receives less than its full due in this work. While McDougall does describe the state of the slavery debate and attempts to plumb the depths of the peculiar institution, the attitudes of the far too many Americans are not explored as well as they could have been. This is a bit of a surprise given that the single greatest social/economic issue of the day - the one driving the debate on the constitutional question of federalism and states' rights - was slavery. That said, McDougall admirably details how the different sides of the slavery debate spent much energy and time avoiding any real resolution to the debate until the force of events placed them in a political situation that required a final and bloody resolution to the great questions of federalism and slavery.

I recently discovered in an interview with Prof. McDougall that "Throes of Democracy" is, unfortunately, the last general American history that he will write. Apparently his publisher didn't even want to release "Throes," since the first volume of the series, the wonderful "Freedom Just Around the Corner," didn't sell. They (Harper) have zero interest in McDougall continuing his American history into the 20th Century, as originally intended.

Which is a great shame. McDougall's books are, admittedly, spiky and unusual and focus on an overall thesis---America as a country built by and for hucksters of all stripes---that isn't very flattering, even if it's true. He doesn't believe in the three-centuries-of-oppression aspect of Howard Zinn's leftist history, nor does he engage in the sort of cultural hagiographies ever-popular on the right. He wrote two brilliant, if at times quite strange and rambling, American histories that provide a clear window into this bizarre and increasingly-fragmented country.

McDougall's books, I hope, will eventually grow in popularity and influence: it may take decades, though. They may have been too acerbic, too plain-speaking for their era. It's a great shame the story ends in 1877, but arguably, everything you need to know about the U.S. today was in place by then...

Professor Walter A. McDougall, an eminent historian at the University of Pennsylvania, is producing one of the finest histories of the United States, one that should be in every school and library in the country - and never be weeded!

One reason is his fortunate choice of the trilogy form. Each volume is over 500 pages. The result is a wealth of detail that both informs and enlivens the very readable text. I understood the coming of the Civil War as never before. President Andrew Jackson, another familiar subject, shines and inflames. That illumination is characteristic of the first two volumes of the trilogy: Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828, and Throes of Democracy, The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877.

This second volume opens with a "tour de force," a synopsis of the first volume. These twelve pages are a classic statement of what made this country "tick" and how we got that way: the singularity of Tudor-Stuart Britain and who our colonists were, why they came, what they hoped to achieve and succeeded in doing. They were, as he wrote, "hustlers," a summation of remarkable clarity. McDougall's "synopsis" is an historical, philosophical evaluation of the highest importance. It rests upon vast research, an extensive career, and experience and comprehension of both Europe and America about which he has written.

The "hustlers" are still arriving, but do both the new ones and the descendants of the earlier ones understand what has made this country "tick" and why? I think not, and that is our peril. I recommend this trilogy as an American text in every high school! Some will say that these books are too long and difficult to teach. If so, neither the students nor the teachers are ready for high school. A country cannot survive without a comprehension of its history. McDougall's trilogy is doing it.

That marvelously illuminating word "hustler" also appeared in Professor Clifford Dowdey's Virginia Dynasties (1969) followed by The Golden Age: A Climate for Greatness in Virginia, 1732-1775. Together with McDougall's work, they are a powerful rendition of who we are and how we got that way. If you want to understand the Republic, here it is! Unfortunately, Dowdey's histories are already being discarded by libraries.

There are other major social, economic, religious, and cultural topics - women's history is one - in which recent scholarship abounds. They can be explored comprehensively elsewhere. McDougall and Dowdey give us history without ideology such as political correctness. What is here is the core of our being!

Wonderfully written, this is the second volume (and stands independently) of an American History series. MacDougal writes so well he makes history accessible to even a casual reader. I think what I found interesting was his insight to Andrew Jackson's populism (good and bad aspects) and distrust of US Banking. As an example, McDougal writes about campaigning: " American democracy was about winning, and the ... had learned through hard experience that the way to win is through comfortable imagery, not uncomfortable ideology." Not much has changed but we do have a better background to understand the present.

Walter A McDougal has done it again. Folllowing his brilliant first part of a trilogy on the history of America, he has written THROES OF DEMOCRACY which also manages to combine the best features of modern historical writing.
This ancient reviewer can remember when history books seemed to be written with only the academically committed in mind. Now we have historians like Mcdougall,Beevor, Schama et al who can make history come alive for the general reader.
These "modern" historians manage to do this, I believe, by peopling their books with characters that capture our imagination. Older histories often appeared to be lists of names and dates fleshed out with causes and effects. Now we have, as in McDougal's books, characters who are interesting. Having read this book I feel I "know" Andrew Jackson, for example, better than after reading an entire book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, good as THE AGE OF JACKSON was in its day.
In Short McDougall writes with the flair of a good novelist, at the same time maintaining high levels of scholarship. Even his end notes contain many gems Highly recommended.