Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859 (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era)

In the decades before the Civil War, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten or discredit their opponents. According to Elizabeth Varon, "disunion" was a startling and provocative keyword in Americans' political vocabulary: it connoted the failure of the founders' singular effort to establish a lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, the image of a cataclysm that would reduce them to misery and fratricidal war. For many others, however, threats, accusations, and intimations of disunion were instruments they could wield to achieve their partisan and sectional goals. In this bracing reinterpretation of the origins of the Civil War, Varon blends political history with intellectual and cultural history to show how Americans, as far back as the earliest days of the republic, agonized and strategized over disunion. She focuses not only on politicians but also on a wide range of reformers, editors, writers, and commentators. Included here are the voices of fugitive slaves, white Southern dissenters, free black activists, abolitionist women, and other outsiders to the halls of power. In a new and expanding nation still learning how to meld disparate and powerful interests, the rhetoric of disunion proved pervasive—and volatile. As the word was marshaled by competing sectional interests in the tumultuous 1840s and 1850s, the politics of compromise grew more remote and an epic collision between the free North and slaveholding South seemed the only way to resolve, once and for all, whether the struggling republic would survive. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 Prologue......Page 32 PART I. 1789 – 1836......Page 44 1 The Language of Terrifying Prophecy: Disunion Debates in the Early Republic......Page 46 2 We Claim Our Rights: The Advent of Abolitionism......Page 70 3 Ruinous Tendencies: The Anti-Abolition Backlash......Page 102 PART II. 1837 – 1850......Page 140 4 The Idea Will Become Familiar: Disunion in the Era of Mass Party Politics......Page 142 5 Oh for a Man Who Is a Man: Debating Slavery’s Expansion......Page 180 6 That Is Revolution!: The Crisis of 1850......Page 214 PART III. 1851 – 1859......Page 248 7 Beneath the Iron Heel: Fugitive Slaves and Bleeding Kansas......Page 250 8 To Consummate Its Boldest Designs: The Slave Power Confronts the Republicans......Page 288 9 War to the Knife: Images of the Coming Fight......Page 320 EPILOGUE: The Rubicon Is Passed: The War and Beyond......Page 352 Notes......Page 364 Bibliography......Page 416 A......Page 446 B......Page 448 C......Page 449 D......Page 450 F......Page 453 G......Page 455 H......Page 456 K......Page 457 L......Page 458 N......Page 459 P......Page 460 R......Page 462 S......Page 463 T......Page 467 V......Page 468 W......Page 469 Z......Page 470 In the decades of the early republic, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth Varon shows,'disunion'connoted the dissolution of the republic--the failure of the founders'effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world. For many others, however, disunion was seen as the main instrument by which they could achieve their partisan and sectional goals. Varon blends political history with intellectual, cultural, and gender history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis of 1860-61. Language has a profound power to shape political reality. In the decades of the early republic, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. This title deals with the most provocative word in the political vocabulary of antebellum America. Varon blends political history with intellectual and cultural history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis. She focuses not only on politicians but also on a wide range of reformers, editors, writers, and commentators