Briefer is often better, and readers who found Stamford professor
Fehrenbacher's Dred Scott Case (1978) overlong will find this
abridged version a better book. To cut the original Pulitzer
prize-winning text by half, Fehrenbacher has excised many clumsy
passages and bulky charts. The essence of the work is here; the
conclusions stand out more boldly; the work remains a feat of
scholarship; a fundamental flaw, though muted, remains too.
Shortened but otherwise unrevised are the discussions of slavery,
the Constitution, and the bitter controversy over whether slavery
should be allowed in the western territories. Here again is
Fehrenbacher's analysis of the Dred Scott decision (in which Chief
Justice Taney ruled that blacks were not citizens and that Congress
could not ban slavery from the territories) and his demonstration
that Taney was dramatically extending the Supreme Court's influence
and authority. While this is an abridgment and not a
popularization, Fehrenbacher has tried to clarify his work by
rewriting several passages, particularly those in which Taney's
momentous opinion is analyzed. He has eliminated the original
text's rhetorical excesses, so that, for example, sentences in
which Taney's opinions are called "outrageous," "gross," and
"astonishing" have been taken out, and a sentence speaking of
Taney's "unpleasant clause" appears in the abridgment with
"unpleasant" discreetly dropped. The effect is to make Fehrenbacher
seem less indignant, less partisan in his assessment of Taney's
ruling; but such cosmetic changes cannot mask the contentiousness
underlying Fehrenbacher's analysis. The abridged version still
treats the reader to the curious spectacle of a living historian,
equipped with a knowledge of history unavailable to the generation
of the 1850s, ridiculing an interpretation of history employed by
Taney in 1857 and calling aspects of Taney's decision "meandering,"
"misleading," and "bizarre." It mars a valuable study. (Kirkus
Reviews)
"This magisterial study is a triumph of scholarship....Must reading for anyone interested in American legal history or the Civil War."--Virginia Quarterly Review
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