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The 1850s offered the last remotely feasible chance for the United
States to steer clear of Civil War. Yet fundamental differences
between North and South about slavery and the meaning of freedom
caused political conflicts to erupt again and again throughout the
decade as the country lurched toward secession and war. With their
grudging acceptance of the Compromise of 1850 and the election of
Franklin Pierce as president in 1852, most Americans hoped that
sectional strife and political upheaval had come to an end.
Extremists in both North and South, abolitionists and
secessionists, testified to the prevailing air of complacency by
their shared frustration over having failed to bring on some sort
of conflict. Both sets of zealots wondered what it would take to
convince the masses that the other side still menaced their
respective visions of liberty. And, as new divisive issues emerged
in national politics-with slavery still standing as the major
obstacle-compromise seemed more elusive than ever. As the decade
progressed, battle lines hardened. The North grew more hostile to
slavery while the South seized every opportunity to spread it.
"Immigrant Aid Societies" flourished in the North, raising money,
men, and military supplies to secure a free soil majority in
Kansas. Southerners flocked to the territory in an effort to fight
off antislavery. After his stirring vilification of the institution
of slavery, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner was brutally
attacked on the floor of the United States Senate. Congress, whose
function was to peacefully resolve disputes, became an armed camp,
with men in both houses and from both sections arming themselves
within the capitol building. In October 1858, Senator William Henry
Seward said that the nation was headed for an "irrepressible
conflict." In spite of the progress ushered in by the decade's
enormous economic growth, the country was self destructing. The
Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s is a concise,
readable analysis and survey of t
William Lowndes Yancey (1814-63) was one of the leading
secessionists of the Old South. In this first comprehensive
biography, Eric H. Walther examines the personality and political
life of the uncompromising fire-eater. Born in Georgia but raised
in the North by a fiercely abolitionist stepfather and an
emotionally unstable mother, Yancey grew up believing that
abolitionists were cruel, meddling, and hypocritical. His personal
journey led him through a series of mentors who transformed his
political views, and upon moving to frontier Alabama in his
twenties, Yancey's penchant for rhetorical and physical violence
was soon channeled into a crusade to protect slaveholders' rights.
Yancey defied Northern Democrats at their national nominating
convention in 1860, rending the party and setting the stage for
secession after the election of Abraham Lincoln. Selected to
introduce Jefferson Davis in Montgomery as the president-elect of
the Confederacy, Yancey also served the Confederacy as a diplomat
and a senator before his death in 1863, just short of his
forty-ninth birthday. More than a portrait of an influential
political figure before and during the Civil War, this study also
presents a nuanced look at the roots of Southern honor, violence,
and understandings of manhood as they developed in the nineteenth
century.
In the early 1850s, northerners and southerners alike used the term
fire-eater to describe anyone whose views were clearly outside the
political mainstream. Eventually, though, the word came to be most
closely identified with those southerners who were staunch and
unyielding advocates of secession. In this broadly researched and
illuminating study, Eric H. Walther examines the lives of nine of
the most prominent fire-eaters: Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, William
Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnwell Rhett,
Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D.B. De Bow, Edmund
Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles. Walther paints skillful
portraits of his subjects, analysing their backgrounds,
personalities, and contributions to the movement for disunion.
Although they shared the common goal of southern independence,
Walther shows that in many respects the fire-eaters differed
markedly from one another. It was their very diversity, he
maintains, that enabled them to appeal to such a wide spectrum of
southern opinion and thereby rally support for secession. In his
exploration of the role of the fire-eaters in the secession
movement, Walther touches upon a number of perennial themes in
southern history, including the appeal of proslavery thought and
southern expansionism, the place of education and industrialization
in antebellum southern society, the significance of oratory in
southern culture, and the nature of southern nationalism. He also
describes the fire-eaters' activities on behalf of the Confederacy
and traces the course of their lives after the war. The Fire-Eaters
makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the secession
movement and the context in which it developed. There is no other
study available that treats these men as a group and that
delineates their manifold differences as well as their
similarities. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic
ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources,
spoke in many voices, and responded to a number of regional
problems, needs, and aspirations.
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