The pages of history fetishize great figures, but what we call “greatness” is often the correction of generational dereliction, when a few people, touched by genius or blessed with high character, heal the rifts in a society caused by the many. Leo Tolstoy best captured this common view of Abraham Lincoln in particular, calling him “a Christ in miniature … bigger than his country [and] all the Presidents put together” — ironic for the author who wrote the greatest case for the opposing view of history, one driven by impersonal forces rather than exceptional individuals: War and Peace, first drafted in 1863, the decisive year of America’s Civil War that would leave over 600,000 dead.
Robert W. Merry’s new book Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 underscores, however, the limitations of focusing too narrowly on exceptional personalities at the expense of broader historical context. A former journalist who covered Washington for the Wall Street Journal for a decade and the acclaimed author of biographies of James K. Polk and William McKinley and their times, Merry writes lucidly, often grippingly, about the political current of the age, as seen through the eyes of the lesser-known politicians of two states, Union Massachusetts and Confederate South Carolina — while the road to “compromise,” if there ever was one, narrowed to finality.
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Merry’s approach explains how America descended into war more fully than an account relying more mainly on individual characters, yet does so without discarding the importance of political prodigy (Lincoln was exceptional, after all), mainly through its absence: Lincoln does not appear until 300 pages in. As such, it is far deeper than its title suggests. It serves as the story of how the preconditions for dialogue and accommodation, essential in a healthy democracy, were corroded as certain causes became fused with identity politics, making reconciliation between two sides impossible. It, therefore, serves as a general explanation of how democratic politics can break down and create the conditions for war.
By example, Merry illustrates how compromise, when it existed, was predicated on the ability to see one’s opponents in rational, not merely emotional, terms, and to speak freely without fear of consequence from one’s own side. He expertly shows how, in the years preceding the Civil War, slavery, despite attempts at concession such as the Compromise of 1850, gradually eroded such principles, becoming symbolic of what it meant for slave-owners to be Southern and, ultimately, “American.” Each political generation’s failure to find a middle way saw the problem fester as each side diverged.
That is not to say, however, that the division between North and South was only rooted in the matter of slavery. One of the most interesting chapters in the book explores the differences between the Puritan North, whose religious viewpoint would later fuel the abolition movement, and the more mercantilist, Anglican South, eager to pursue finance by whatever means available, which would later radicalize the slave-owners. This was despite, for Merry, the “cyclical trap” they were falling into. For, as he writes, “to maintain economic growth, they needed to cultivate more and more acreage for their staple crops … to do that they needed more slaves; but, as the slave population grew, so did anxieties about the threat of insurrection; as anxieties grew, institutional controls over those in bondage tightened; as they tightened, the prospect of rebellion increased.” This fear, of one day being outnumbered by an enemy within, only grew throughout the 1850s.
