Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

SYNOPSIS:

This is a study of the breakdown of the Second American Party System and the coming of the Civil War. Holt counters the argument that sectional tension over slavery prior to April 1861 "produced war between [North and South] after that date." (2) He believes such an interpretation fails to explain why a prolonged conflict produced war then and not at another time. Crucial to his study is not what pitted North against South but rather "how the nation could contain or control that division for so long and then allow it suddenly to erupt into war." (3) Holt argues that the key to Civil War causation can be found in the collapse of two-party system. Further, this collapse "aggravated and in part reflected a loss of popular faith in the normal party political process to meet the needs of voters." (4) He believes that a "deep-seated republican ideology," which sought to protect the equality and liberty of whites from aristocratic privilege and tyranny, shaped and intensified the political crisis during this time. The conflict boiled over because each section saw the other "as the subverter of republicanism. . . bent on perverting the traditional basis of society and government." (6) Sectional extremism and, eventually, war resulted because there was no "framework of two-party competition. . . to help restore public confidence that republicanism could once again be secured by normal political methods." (6)

EXCERPT:

"The basic objective of Republican campaigns from 1856 to 1860, therefore, was to persuade Northerners that slaveholders meant to enslave them through their control of the national government and to enlist Northern voters behind the Republican party in a defensive phalanx to ward off that slavery, and not in an offensive crusade to end black slavery." (191)

"When the Second Party System collapsed in the South, however, new frameworks of two-party competition for national, and more important for state offices did not emerge with equal strength everywhere. Interparty competition remained fairly close in most of the upper South states, so that both contending parties seemed to be legitimate alternatives to control the government. Within the states of the lower South, however, the Democratic party achieved such dominance after the Whigs collapsed and Know Nothingism faded that they became virtual one-party polities. In terms of confidence in the political process, which rested on the presence of perceived and viable party alternatives, the Deep South states had approached the status of South Carolina by 1860. This fact may have been why Yancey thought that secession as an antiparty movement could succeed in the cotton states alone." (230-231)

"Most important, however, the core of the secessionist persuasion was aimed at the same republican values of Southerners that Republicans appealed to among Northerners. Although the secessionists and their allies did, indeed, warn of the dangers of abolition and escalate demands concerning slavery in the territories, the essence of their appeal had less to do with black slavery than with protecting the rights of Southern whites from despotism. The central issue was neither race nor restriction, but republicanism. Where Republicans had located the antirepublican monster in the Slave Power conspiracy, secessionists identified it with the Republican party, which they labeled a threat to self-government, the rule of law, Southern liberty, and Southern equality." (240)

RELATIONSHIP:

Holt's analysis covers the national political events of the 1850s and their culmination in the secession crisis. While we agree with much of Holt's analysis, our emphasis on the fundamental difference that slavery made between North and South differs from Holt's interpretive assumption that the sections were not fundamentally different. Holt argued that the sections were intrinsically similar because of their shared republican ideology and political system; only the breakdown of the political system explained the divergence of the sections into Civil War. Holt further claimed that "the sectional conflict over slavery had been crucial in causing the Civil War, but the basic issue had less to do with the institution of black slavery than has been thought." (258) Holt's emphasis on the politics of slavery as an "abstract status men hoped to escape, a status they equated with the end of republican government" confined slavery's role in a way that our analysis does not.

"In Augusta clusters of contiguous precincts gave their support in the 1860 presidential election in similar patterns."

"Whigs accounted for the most visible party activists in Augusta County, but activists in both parties exerted significant influence."

"Precincts in Augusta that supported Breckinridge at a high level in 1860 represented the extremes of wealth, as the wealthiest and the poorest precincts drew more support for Breckinridge than any other precincts."

"The precincts with high Bell support had average household wealth and farm value well below county averages. For these marginal places a vote for Bell represented a safe course, the least change."

"In Franklin County, John Breckinridge won a majority in six precincts, most of them in the far northern and western belt of the county, where few blacks lived and farmers planted corn not wheat."

"Lincoln won sixteen precincts in Franklin, ten of them by margins greater than 55 percent, with support mainly from the urban center of the county and places with the highest numbers of black residents--even though black men could not vote in Pennsylvania."