Reviews for The panic of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War

The average rating for The panic of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-24 00:00:00 Dee Clark In this book, James Huston examines the specific impact of the Panic of 1857 on the election of 1860 and, by extension, its contribution to the Civil War. The Panic itself resulted from reduced European demand for American food at the end of the Crimean War, and unsound banking practices exacerbated it. The North and West suffered much greater distress than did the South, leading some southerners to conclude that their slave-based labor system was less prone to market fluctuations than the northern industrial, free labor system. Huston’s primary point is to demonstrate that while the economic issues related to the Panic of 1857 did not replace slavery as the most important factor leading up to the war, they did serve to reinvigorate issues relegated to the political background by the sectional disputes of the 1850s. The Republicans benefited most from these issues by successfully wooing many old-line Whigs and some nativists into the party for the 1860 election. Huston claims that this group of voters supplied the votes needed by Lincoln in the key states of Indiana, Illinois, and especially Pennsylvania, allowing him to win an election that otherwise would likely have gone to the House of Representatives. Each contestant in the 1860 election responded to the economic issues in separate ways. Both Democratic nominees, Douglas and Breckenridge, offered almost nothing in economic policy, other than a transcontinental railroad for Douglas and the annexation of Cuba for Breckenridge. The Constitutional Unionists of John Bell had no official economic plank in their platform, either, but unofficially sought to convince the North that slavery was essential to its prosperity. The Republicans, on the other hand, offered several platform planks concerned with economic issues. These included a homestead act (opposed by Democrats because it favored free labor), river and harbor improvements (previously vetoed by Buchanan), construction of a Pacific railroad, and, most importantly, a moderately protective tariff, of great interest to manufacturers in the key Electoral College state of Pennsylvania. President Buchanan did not help the cause of his fellow Democrats against the Republicans. Accused of corruption in the printing office, the naval yards, and the War Department, he also vetoed a homestead act, harbor improvements, and a bill to establish agricultural colleges, to name only the most important. These numerous vetoes alienated northern voters, further weakening northerners in a Democratic Party already weakened by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution battle. In fact, the only real economic argument offered by the Democrats during the campaign was to insist that the election of the Republicans would lead to secession, thereby disrupting the trade in southern agricultural products on which much northern industry depended. Even this argument, however, lost much of its persuasiveness when prosperity returned in 1859. Huston’s conclusion to chapter nine sums up his argument nicely. “Secession occurred because the South felt it had to protect the institution of slavery. The immediate cause of the southerners’ action was Lincoln’s election; the immediate cause of Lincoln’s election was the transformation of Pennsylvania from a Democratic to a Republican state. The Panic of 1857 played no small part in that transformation.” (260) The value of this work depends on your view concerning the importance of economics in history. Personally, I found Huston’s analysis to be very enlightening, though admittedly, I place a higher value on economics than some. The value of the argument is that it considers explanations outside of the purely political narratives featured in many explanations for the coming of the Civil War. Excellent as those political explanations are, they do give short shrift to economic considerations at times, and this book helps put that situation into context. In addition, the conclusions, based on an analysis of voting, give objectivity to the analysis. This leads to a deeper understanding of all the important issue at play leading toward the Civil War.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-24 00:00:00 Sheena Terrell Good information, a bit dry at times. The organization (flow) did not always work for me.