Customer Reviews

Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War

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A quite good account of the immediate political run-up to the Civil War. Professor Douglas R. Egerton's book should be read by anyone with an interest in how the various political parties and factions handled, or mishandled, the presidential election campaign of 1860 and, afterward, the months leading to Abraham Lincoln's inaugural in March of 1861.

Many general history books on the period glide over such events as Senator Stephen Douglas' campaign foray into the South, the Peace Convention, or the details of the formation of Jefferson Davis' cabinet. "Year of Meteors" is a full account, essential to understanding of why planters and firebrands acted to take the South out of the union and what compromises had been attempted to prevent this disunion.

Professor Egerton is right in placing slavery (not economics or constitutional theory) front and center as the reason so many soldiers died in the 1860s.

I personally do not value Senator Douglas as much as does the author, but I do value this book and highly recommend it.

I actually started this book by first reading the Appendix and the Acknowledgements, and it left me with a sense of foreboding. The author, a college professor based in New York, is (surprise!) very liberal.

In the Acknowledgements, he oddly concludes by saying George McGovern's 1972 Presidential campaign "now stand(s) vindicated" (page 341). McGovern himself, however, once observed "For years, I wanted to run for President in the worst possible way - and I'm sure I did!" In the Appendix, Egerton labels the George W. Bush administration as "failed" (337). That seems a premature judgment for an historian - would he say the same of Harry Truman, whose party also lost the next election by a wide margin? Finally, Egerton makes sure to point out that the modern-day Republican Party is now the dominate party of the American South (338). He no doubt wanted to make this point because the American South is the clear villain in Egerton's book.

Yet, I am pleasantly surprised to report that this is actually a good book, if you read it with the understanding that it is written from an old-fashioned, immediate abolitionist perspective. I have read a number of Presidential campaign books, and I would rank this among the better ones (my personal favorites are "The 103rd Ballot" - 1924 - and "Dark Horse" - 1880). It is, indeed, a comprehensive survey of the momentous election of 1860. There is little or no cultural history covered here. It's all politics - smoke-filled rooms, speeches, floor fights in legislative and convention halls, and electoral map strategizing. And, that's what I like in my Presidential campaign books.

Egerton also wisely does not devote much attention to the winner - Abraham Lincoln. The story of his rise from long-shot to surprise nominee is a well worn yarn, and the sections devoted to his campaign are actually among the slowest. The author focuses on the other candidates, especially Stephen Douglas, and it really is fascinating. I also learned a lot about the largely forgotten campaigns of John Bell and John Breckinridge.

There are only two qualms I have, one light-hearted, the other more serious. Light-heartedly, while I found it interesting to read about Gerrit Smith and the Liberty Party, Egerton puts way too much emphasis on Smith as a potential spoiler for the Republicans. Smith finished fifth in the popular vote that year, and he only got about 500 votes (or 0.01%) nationally. Egerton, I suspect, knew he was making too much of Smith's candidacy - because he never does tell us how many votes Smith actually got.

A more serious problem is Egerton's all-out determination to lay the entire cause of the Civil War on the issue of slavery alone. On this basis of argument, everything the South does seems incomprehensible or simply evil to the reader. He then personifies this incomprehensible, evil South in the words and deeds of fire-eaters Edmund Ruffin and, especially, William Yancey. When they eventually meet their personal dooms in 1865 and 1863, respectively, we the readers take grim satisfaction.

However, Egerton should know better than this because among his sources is Volume II of "The Emergence of Lincoln" by Allan Nevins. According to Nevins, it was not one cause unattached to anything else, and it was not one section alone, that was to blame for the war. After a thorough analysis of its many alleged causes, Nevins concludes on page 468: "The main root of the conflict (and there were minor roots) was the problem of slavery with its complementary problem of race-adjustment; the main source of the tragedy was the refusal of either section to face these conjoined problems squarely and pay the heavy costs of a peaceful settlement." I would also recommend, in that same book, the long chapter on "Slavery in a World Setting," which offers a very fair analysis of the slavery problem in the South. Why wouldn't Egerton listen to Nevins? As a speech writer for JFK, he was very liberal himself.

Recently while watching a CSPAN program, I was reminded that the sesquicentennial of the US civil war/war between the states is fast approaching. And, of course, the presidential election that arguably brought on that war took place 150 years ago this fall. Thus it is appropriate that a book on the 1860 election should appear.

YEAR OF METEORS is historian DOuglas R. Egerton's study of what I have long believed is the single most important presidential election in US history. That is because the election's results caused states to secede from the union, and when the newly elected president of the US refused to allow their secession, the war came.

This book is almost entirely political history. Egerton begins with an examination of the political scene (issues, ideologies, events, candidates) on the eve of the election. He then devotes four chapters to each of the political parties which contested this election: Democrats (Stephen Douglas) and Southern break-away Democrats (John Breckinridge); Constitutional Union (John Bell) and Liberty (Gerritt Smith); and Republican (Abraham Lincoln). Next comes a chapter describing events, issues, and candidates during the fall campaign and then one on the secession of the lower-South states. There follows a chapter on the establishment of the CSA government and the formation of Lincoln's administration. We are also reminded of the several attempts at a Compromise of 1860 and that a Peace Convention met in the District of Columbia in February 1861 following the first phase of secession. An Epilogue describing events leading immediately to the outbreak of the war concludes the work.

When I came across this book something inside me said "it's about time a historian published a modern history of this election". I was somewhat excited. However, after finishing it, my attitude is slightly different. I found the book not terribly interestingly written and felt a need rather than a desire to finish it. I'm not certain why I felt this way. Maybe I've already read too much on this period and its political characters. Perhaps the book is so politically oriented and might have benefitted from the inclusion of a little more non-political material. Yes, I know: elections are very political events!

So I tried to identify some of the parts of the book which I found especially interesting. The author's treatment of Stephen Douglas (he begins and ends the book with Douglas) is one. And I really enjoyed the sections on Virginia fireater Edmund Ruffin, a slightly bizarre figure, and the young group of Republican Party partisans during the fall campaign known as "Wide Awakes". More profiles and topics along these lines would have been helpful in adding variety. I also would have liked to have seen a chapter describing how common people in various sections of the country reacted to and responded to Lincoln's victory in November.

I definitely would prefer to see more interpretation and analysis from the author. In the book he pretty much gives us narrative history. Greater inclusion of interpretation and maybe even some conjecture would have made the book more attractive for me. For example, would Douglas' election as president likely have led to delay of or even prevention of secession and war? I don't know, but I have long wondered about this and would like to see Egerton's views.

A couple miscellaneous comments in closing. The book badly needs a bibliography. With the huge number of sources cited in the notes, the lack of a bib is appalling and inexcusable. What is the matter with editors and publishers? As for the book's title, in case anyone is wondering, it is taken from a Walt Whitman poem.

And yes, elections do matter.

3.75 stars
Tim Koerner December 2010

One of the real strokes of luck in our nation's history was that the chaotic presidential election of 1860 somehow coughed up the greatest political and moral genius to hold the office.

In Year of Meteors, Douglas Egerton details the eventual year, showing how the Democrats foreshadowing the country, divided over the issues of slavery and secession. This book improves the record of the period with its attention to the election itself.

The author focuses on Stephen Douglas for much of the first half of the book, and I am not sure that choice was wise. Douglas by this time was more reacting to events, desperately trying to hold the nation together, rather than being a causal agent. Additionally, some of the post election sections of the book covers much of the same territory as Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

However this is a very well done book that will be of interest to anyone with an interest in how the fires of the Civil War were ignited.

Arguably the pivotal event that made the Civil War inevitable was the Democrat Party Convention in Charleston in April 1860. At that convention the Southern Nationalist William Yancey led the Southern States in "seceding" from the Democrat Party, thereby destroying party unity. This not only insured that Lincoln would be elected President, but that the Southern States would secede from the Union in response to it.

Alabama "Fire Eater" William Yancey was one of the "meteors" that flashed across the political sky in that critical year. Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Jefferson Davis, John Breckinridge, and John Bell were others who shone brightly during that year's four-way election that resulted in Lincoln's election followed by Civil War. And of course there is Lincoln himself, whose star remains forever fixed in the firmament of history.

Professor Edgerton paints a wonderful 3D portrait of this climactic election year by describing these people and the events they caused. The story is full of color and insight. It is also very well researched, weaving into a coherent fabric many threads from little known primary sources, such as those that describe the Democrats' fateful convention in Charleston. Because 1860 was overshadowed by the Civil War the events of that year are under-reported. This book fills that void.

The parts that were most moving to me were the stories of Stephen Douglas, the flawed politician whose true devotion was to the Union. In the final year of his life Douglas finally abandoned all of his fluid pro-slavery compromises and did all in his power to weld the Northern faction of his party into a pro-Union force. Tragically he died from over-drinking as he completed his life's work. There is also the moving story of William Seward, the presumptive presidential nominee, who had to put aside his life's ambition to be President in order to faithfully serve his country as Lincoln's Secretary of State.

On the Southern side there are the dramatic stories of William Yancey, the man most responsible for bringing on the Civil War; and of Jefferson Davis, John Breckinridge, and Alexander Stephens --- devoted Unionists whose loyalty to their Southern States finally pulled them out of the Union.

As others have pointed out this book pins the entire blame for the Civil War on the Southern slave owners. Some see this as bias, but I believe it is an accurate statement of fact. The radical Southern nationalists like Yancey WERE bull-headed secessionists whose only ambition was to get the slaveholding South out from under the Yankees so that they would have freedom of action to conquer Mexico and Central America and repopulate those countries with masters and slaves. Of course the Yankees gave them plenty of ammunition, such as John Brown's Raid, to inflame the situation, but it was the Southern "Fire Eaters" who ultimately rejected compromise. The author makes it clear that even anti-slavery men like Seward bent over backward to try to compromise to save the union in 1860. Seward actually changed the terminology from "Free States / Slave States" to "Labor States / Capital States!" The author points out that Seward's anti-slavery wife was extremely annoyed by his overtures to the Southern slave owners.

However, the book does go overboard in claiming that secession lacked popular support. Secession was popular with the majority of Southern Whites who said in effect: "We're tired of the d-n Yankees trying to tell us what to do with our n-gg-ers. The Yankees should mind their own d-n business and stop sticking their noses in ours."

This attitude is grossly offensive today, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't popular among white Southerners of all classes in 1860. In truth the popular aspect of what Southerners called their "War of Independence" exceeded the boundaries of the Confederacy. If the Lincoln administration had not clamped down on Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri with heavy-handed military occupation, popular sentiment would have taken these states into the Confederacy at some point during the war. Lincoln sometimes had difficulty even keeping Illinois and Indiana fully committed to the Union war effort due to the partisan anti-Lincoln and pro-Southern elements in these states who elected "Copperhead" state legislatures that attempted to defund the war. Thus, it is a falsehood to say that the Confederacy did not have popular support among all classes of Whites, including some who lived NORTH of the Mason-Dixon line.

Still, the author is correct in blaming secession on the South's slaveowning planting class. If they had been willing to compromise in good faith with the North they could have gained additional protections for slavery in the Union and defused the popular clamor for secession. This multi-faceted issue is still hotly debated today -- with many Northern historians claiming that secession was less popular among Southern Whites than it actually was, and some Southern historians claiming that secession was universally popular among Southern Whites because of shared values of States Rights rather than slavery. Of course the truth lies somewhere in between these extremes. Just be aware that Edgerton has chosen to latch on to the Northern "soundbite" without delving into the complexities of the subject, which would have required a whole 'nother book to be thoroughly discussed.

However, the substantive part of the book about the factual events of 1860 seems to me to be entirely accurate. Not only that, but the book is a most excellent read. I enjoyed every page and felt that I was sitting right there at the side of these "meteors" of 1860 as they decided whether to secede from the Union or sustain it. I can't give the author enough kudos for making a valuable contribution to an under-reported subject and doing it in a style of panache and verve.

The Civil War is certainly a well examined part of American history, however the first years of the crisis are rarely examined. Year of Meteors examines the final year before the war and, most interestingly, shows the desperate measures that were taken in the final moments in a futile attempt to stave of the war. The characters are presented with depth and insight and the events which took place are examined in detail without the micro-inspection which sometimes bogs down similar works.

Douglas Egerton does a great job of assigning responsibility to the firebrands who were determined to break up the Union. He lets the reader see the tradition campaign manipulations which take place and shares insights into Stephen Douglas which return him to the front of the stage so that he is no longer remembered as the guy who debated with Abraham Lincoln.

This is a very good book. I only refrain from giving it five stars because it hardly touches on the popular feelings in both states. I disagree that the elites dragged their respective states into secession and were responsible exclusively for the problem. Still this is a very good book to read and highly enjoyable.

Professor Egerton's book Year of Meteors provides a good overview of the politics of the year 1860. He covers a lot of ground succinctly and successfully. I particularly liked his coverage of the two different Democratic conventions; his detailed writing on the split between the two sectional factions of what was then the only national parties show elements of the rancor that would infect the country during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The hatred, animosity, and near violence of this year puts the partisanship of our politics into healthly historical perspective.

Keith

This book might best be entitled "The Making of the President 1860" as it deals with the players and factors that resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. As is the case with numerous elections, both before and since, it is not only the story of how Lincoln's victory, but also it is an account of the failure of his opponent, Stephen Douglas. It is also the story of the evil persons who plotted not only to destroy the Democratic Party and deny Douglas the presidency, but also to destroy the United States.
Like most elections, the story really begins several years before the year the voting takes place. Douglas Egerton, begins his story with a plot by southern slave advocates to destroy the United States. The two primary movers were an unsavory lot. William Yodes Yancy, a convicted murderer and Robert Barnwell Rhett, publisher of the Charleston Mercury, the Fox News of its day, plotted since at least the time of the compromise of 1850 to destroy the union and betray their native country.

In many ways these people, the Rhetts and Yancy are familiar figures. They are confused and hostile to modernity and the prospect of freedom becoming too wide spread and being displaced in the resulting environment. They were the Tea Party founders of the 19th century and suspicious of the threat posed by the federal government to restrict slavery in any fashion. Not only did they wish to see slavery protected in the existing states and spread to the territories, they wanted the revival of the slave trade in the Atlantic. They wanted slavery celebrated for the positive good that it had accomplished throughout its existence. This may seem like a form of madness, slavery being a good thing, but such were the views of these fathers of succession.

The people who defended slavery took an almost Marxist view of capitalism, believing it in some sense to be crueler than bondage which limited the educational and economic opportunities on the basis of race and tended to maintain the existing class structure in perpetuity. Fine if you are at the top already, not so good if you are not. Of course if one was not at the top, various speakers and books could be generated to scare people into supporting the existing order of things which could on a certain level seem better than a less certain future. In a sense rather than being somehow superior to the owners of Northern factories, the people like Yancy and the Rhetts were actually a crueler more doctrinaire version of the same attitudes that created "the dark Satanic Mills" of Blake's imagination. They also played just as big a role in electing Lincoln as president as did anything his campaign managers, David Davis ever did. The plan was to destroy the Democratic Party, elect a Republican president and use this election as a wedge issue to promote secession among the slave states. It was a plan that worked to perfection, but probably the ultimate result, the emancipation of slaves and passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, would have led its authors to reconsider.

Douglas Egerton shows just how the people who worked behind the scenes influenced the outcome of the election more so than the people who were assumed to have the ability to shape events. Both the forces within the Democratic Party, including those treasonous and disloyal elements who sought to destroy the union and the abolitionist and moneyed elements in the Republican Party were really at a cross roads in 1860. The country had stretched cost to cost and the expansionist impulse that had fueled the Democratic Party's post 1828 dominance over the hapless Whigs had reached its conclusion. What remained was the question of where the United States would go in the future. By seeking to destroy the Union, Yancy and Rhett assured that their own region would be a provincial backwater for the next 100 years, when their ideological descendents under Strom Thrumond could become Republicans and those who could claim the abolitionists as ideological antecedents could become Democrats.

The 1860 Presidential election was one of the most important and exciting elections in our nation's history. Year of Meteors is an excellent review of the politics behind the election. Douglas Egerton brings to life some of the lesser known, but most fascinating characters of this time period. The casual Civil War reader may have never heard of William Yancey, Edmund Ruffin, and Robert Rhett, but Egerton shows just how historically important these "fire-eaters" were. Egerton blames for breaking up the Democratic Party and electing Lincoln--because they wanted an excuse for the Southern states to secede and form their own nation.

Beyond the election, Egerton details the attempted compromises in Congress in 1861. He squashes the revisionist viewpoint that the tariffs were the cause of the Civil War, quoting Southerner after Southerner in 1861 saying explicitly they were seceding because of slavery. The most controversial part of the book was Egerton's high praise of Stephen Douglas. He argues that Douglas may have saved the Union by keeping the Northern Democrats united behind the war effort. An impressive look at a fascinating period of history.

I had always been taught that the precipitating cause of the Civil War was a question of states' rights, and that slavery was lower on the cause ladder. This extremely well-written book turns all of that on its head, and posits that slavery was THE cause for the war.

The author shows that the Southern fire brands were determined upon secession unless they received all of their demands, especially that slavery would be extended into the Western territories beyond Texas. He also shows that there were many in the North who believed that only complete concession to Southern demands could avert war, and they were attempting to do all that they could to placate the South. Even Lincoln was agreeable to a constitutional amendment allowing slavery to remain in the states where it was practiced at the time.

Eventually the folks in the North realized that there was no compromising with the Southern radicals, and that war was going to be the only response. Stephen Douglas comes through in this book as, eventually, a man of principal who, once he realized that nothing he or others in the North could do to stop the seceding states, believed that the Union should be preserved, and he fully supported Lincoln in his stand against the spread of slavery.

This is a complicated bok, but the prose is so well crafted that it is easy to read and understand. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in how and why the Civil War began, and I think that they will find it different from the version they may have been taught in school.