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We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
In this carefully researched book William J. Cooper gives us a fresh perspective on the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, during which all efforts to avoid or impede secession and prevent war failed. Here is the story of the men whose decisions and actions during the crisis of the Union resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War.
Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War.
All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others—northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike—strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.
We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.
Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War.
All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others—northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike—strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.
We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
William J. Cooper Jr.
17 books20 followersWILLIAM J. COOPER, JR., is Boyd Professor of History at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Southern Historical Association. He was born in Kingstree, South Carolina, and received his AB from Princeton and his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the LSU faculty since 1980 and is the author of The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877-1890; The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1816-1856; Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860; Jefferson Davis, American; and coauthor of The American South: A History. He lives in Baton Rouge.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 8, 2022
A riveting look at the weeks and months leading up to Fort Sumter, this book delivers in a big way. The author introduces us to some of the pivotal political players involved in the rush to war. We learn of the schemes and subplots that could have potentially changed history. We also learn something often overlooked in most studies of the time; that the characters involved were human, with human aspirations, strengths, weaknesses and failings. Overall a very good book; even though written from a Southern viewpoint.
December 22, 2012
My impression of Cooper's book is a mix of good news/bad news. The good news is that this book is extremely well-written & it does an excellent job of portraying the frantic, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts of Congress to find some sort of workable compromise during the period of time covered in We Have the War Upon Us. Of particular interest is Seward's activities/motivations during those efforts. Cooper also vividly shows the effect of Lincoln's studied silence on the people who were desperate to hear some reassuring word from the president-elect.
The bad news is that Cooper's negative critique of Lincoln's silence fails to take into account Lincoln's moral courage in refusing to consider yet another compromise with the South over the territorial expansion of slavery. As Lincoln said, "The tug has to come. Hold firm, as with a chain of steel." Lincoln's predecessors had compromised with the South time & again, and so had passed the buck along to someone else down the line, but Lincoln was determined not to do that. Lincoln was courageous enough to shoulder the responsibility if 'the tug' came on his watch- if the South rejected the 1860 presidential election results and chose rebellion.
The bad news is that Cooper's negative critique of Lincoln's silence fails to take into account Lincoln's moral courage in refusing to consider yet another compromise with the South over the territorial expansion of slavery. As Lincoln said, "The tug has to come. Hold firm, as with a chain of steel." Lincoln's predecessors had compromised with the South time & again, and so had passed the buck along to someone else down the line, but Lincoln was determined not to do that. Lincoln was courageous enough to shoulder the responsibility if 'the tug' came on his watch- if the South rejected the 1860 presidential election results and chose rebellion.
January 10, 2020
William J. Cooper - South Carolina-born, LSU professor of history, emeritus of the (US) Southern Historical Association - gives us a fine, modern, Southern view of the events and tensions between Lincoln's election and the cannonade of Fort Sumter. His scrutiny of the United States, of DC, of the Republican Party and the "dis-unionists" of the Deep South is meticulous. Yet I'm going to disagree on a few points with his Olympic scholarship, if readers will be so kind to indulge this humble deviance.
Cooper tells us that Lincoln had become so Yankified in Illinois that he knew nothing of the South. Yet Lincoln was a Kentucky native - a region that, though it considered itself "Western" - was peopled by Southern immigrants, and allowed slavery. Lincoln also traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Thus, though Lincoln may have lacked sympathy with slaveholding Deep Southerners, he did understand where they were coming from: the concepts are not identical, though Cooper seems to confuse the points. Lincoln's take was that of a border state small farmer throughout his career: "tolerance" of slavery and slaveholders as long as neither got in his way. Such may have been, in part, a motive for Lincoln's family, along with thousands of other Kentuckians, for crossing the Ohio into the Old Northwest as slavery entrenched itself in Kentucky's economy and legislature. His personal take on slavery as a "moral evil" did not push him into the ranks of the Garrisonians. Lincoln always retained his realism, seeking - in cold war terms - a policy of containment, to tolerate it where it exists but not to allow it to penetrate new territory. It would be interesting to pursue how much of Lincoln's attitude influenced cold war architects like George Kennan or Dean Acheson eighty years later.
Lincoln's border state, poor white farmer attitude brings us into why so many non-slaveholding white farmers and laborers of the Deep South sided with secession. It was not just because slaveholding was exactly "diffuse," as Cooper suggests. Many middling farmers owned a few, equivalent to the live-in farmhands of the North. But the bulk of slaves were owned by the wealthy, who transferred their economic clout into political dominance. The poor white Southern majority of the hills and piney woods had as many issues with their planters as Lincoln, but sided with slavery in 1861 for one simple reason: slavery equaled white supremacy, and on this point all in the Deep South could find committed agreement. Just as Christian values and fear of Muslims can unite their descendants in today's mobile home parks, so did the fear of black equality forced upon them by northern Republicans mobilize them into disunion against their initial reluctance. Thus Cooper's assertion that the majority of white Southerners "supported their slave society" must be seen in context of Deep South demography (as opposed to Kentucky). Cooper seems to flinch from probing too deeply into this tender social crevice.
My third criticism has to do with "the first shots," and here I think he gives Lincoln too much benefit of the doubt. To use another future parallel, there's evidence that FDR followed Lincoln's pattern, equating his Pearl Harbor with Lincoln's Fort Sumter. This opens a fascinating path that Cooper wants to prudently avoid. Yet as Roosevelt knew Japan was set on a course of war - aided by his own provocations - so did Lincoln see that all he need do was let the Southern fire-eaters back themselves in a corner from which they'd be forced to fight. By letting them discharge the first shot, they could be held accountable for "starting" a war he wanted as much as they but could not initiate for political reasons at his rear.
All that said, Cooper's book is well worth reading. His Southern POV comes through clearly. But reader critique should not stop one from enjoying a stimulating, richly written work on a still-contentious time.
Cooper tells us that Lincoln had become so Yankified in Illinois that he knew nothing of the South. Yet Lincoln was a Kentucky native - a region that, though it considered itself "Western" - was peopled by Southern immigrants, and allowed slavery. Lincoln also traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Thus, though Lincoln may have lacked sympathy with slaveholding Deep Southerners, he did understand where they were coming from: the concepts are not identical, though Cooper seems to confuse the points. Lincoln's take was that of a border state small farmer throughout his career: "tolerance" of slavery and slaveholders as long as neither got in his way. Such may have been, in part, a motive for Lincoln's family, along with thousands of other Kentuckians, for crossing the Ohio into the Old Northwest as slavery entrenched itself in Kentucky's economy and legislature. His personal take on slavery as a "moral evil" did not push him into the ranks of the Garrisonians. Lincoln always retained his realism, seeking - in cold war terms - a policy of containment, to tolerate it where it exists but not to allow it to penetrate new territory. It would be interesting to pursue how much of Lincoln's attitude influenced cold war architects like George Kennan or Dean Acheson eighty years later.
Lincoln's border state, poor white farmer attitude brings us into why so many non-slaveholding white farmers and laborers of the Deep South sided with secession. It was not just because slaveholding was exactly "diffuse," as Cooper suggests. Many middling farmers owned a few, equivalent to the live-in farmhands of the North. But the bulk of slaves were owned by the wealthy, who transferred their economic clout into political dominance. The poor white Southern majority of the hills and piney woods had as many issues with their planters as Lincoln, but sided with slavery in 1861 for one simple reason: slavery equaled white supremacy, and on this point all in the Deep South could find committed agreement. Just as Christian values and fear of Muslims can unite their descendants in today's mobile home parks, so did the fear of black equality forced upon them by northern Republicans mobilize them into disunion against their initial reluctance. Thus Cooper's assertion that the majority of white Southerners "supported their slave society" must be seen in context of Deep South demography (as opposed to Kentucky). Cooper seems to flinch from probing too deeply into this tender social crevice.
My third criticism has to do with "the first shots," and here I think he gives Lincoln too much benefit of the doubt. To use another future parallel, there's evidence that FDR followed Lincoln's pattern, equating his Pearl Harbor with Lincoln's Fort Sumter. This opens a fascinating path that Cooper wants to prudently avoid. Yet as Roosevelt knew Japan was set on a course of war - aided by his own provocations - so did Lincoln see that all he need do was let the Southern fire-eaters back themselves in a corner from which they'd be forced to fight. By letting them discharge the first shot, they could be held accountable for "starting" a war he wanted as much as they but could not initiate for political reasons at his rear.
All that said, Cooper's book is well worth reading. His Southern POV comes through clearly. But reader critique should not stop one from enjoying a stimulating, richly written work on a still-contentious time.
December 1, 2017
A detailed examination of the machinations and events that took the country from the election of Abraham Lincoln to the first shot at Fort Sumter.
Although we rightly link the start of the Civil War to Lincoln's election, we forget that a full five months elapsed between the events, as the country's leaders struggled and failed to deal with the crisis of the seceding southern states. Cooper puts the reader right into this uncertain moment, delving through a trove of letters and speeches to give us the view of the past through the eyes of those who lived it. Fluidly written (with only a few hiccups of repetition when he returns to a topic which he ably left aside earlier), this book easily navigates a tight chronology without missing a step. The reader rides alongside Lincoln on his journey from Illinois to his inaugural as he works on his speech, softening its tone. When he set out from Illinois, his address condemned the South as traitors; when he delivered the speech on the steps of the Capitol weeks later, his famous call to renew the "bonds of affection" was now in place.
Throughout the book, Cooper lauds the efforts of leaders like William Seward and the now-forgotten Senator John J. Crittenden in trying to find a compromise that would keep the South in the Union. Here, the author's efforts to approach the time through the eyes of contemporaries run into the sentiments of the modern day. As I read through the many proposals to appease the slaveholders of the South, every fiber of my being was appalled at the efforts to negotiate about the monstrous evils of the slave system. Cooper's too much of a professional to indulge in counter-factuals, but you can't help but ponder them as Cooper laments the actions taken. The reader is faced with the prospect of a nation held together by compromise, one with a thirteenth amendment that didn't abolish slavery, but instead guaranteed it, making it nearly impossible to get rid of. Without saying as much, Cooper thinks the cost of avoiding the war would be worth it. It's not in the scope of the work, but the untold extended suffering of the enslaved millions isn't truly explored and weighed against the slaughter of the war. The moral calculus is left to the reader. Frankly, I don't think any attempt at compromise would have pacified the South, which revolted at the prospect of a Republican party that didn't even want to abolish slavery, but rather wished to deny slaveholders the prospect of spreading their system further into the territories. I, for one, found myself nodding along with Lincoln's frustration at the compromises cobbled together in 1820 and 1850, which only postponed reckoning and extended the horror of slavery. "Stand firm," he wrote in December 1860, urging resistance to compromise. "The tug has to come, & better now, than anytime hereafter."
Regardless, this is one of those books that's a pleasure to read, even if you disagree with the thesis. You never get the sense that Cooper's subtle argument has affected his judicious handling of the facts. He's a trustworthy and enjoyable guide, even if you take issue with his conclusions.
Although we rightly link the start of the Civil War to Lincoln's election, we forget that a full five months elapsed between the events, as the country's leaders struggled and failed to deal with the crisis of the seceding southern states. Cooper puts the reader right into this uncertain moment, delving through a trove of letters and speeches to give us the view of the past through the eyes of those who lived it. Fluidly written (with only a few hiccups of repetition when he returns to a topic which he ably left aside earlier), this book easily navigates a tight chronology without missing a step. The reader rides alongside Lincoln on his journey from Illinois to his inaugural as he works on his speech, softening its tone. When he set out from Illinois, his address condemned the South as traitors; when he delivered the speech on the steps of the Capitol weeks later, his famous call to renew the "bonds of affection" was now in place.
Throughout the book, Cooper lauds the efforts of leaders like William Seward and the now-forgotten Senator John J. Crittenden in trying to find a compromise that would keep the South in the Union. Here, the author's efforts to approach the time through the eyes of contemporaries run into the sentiments of the modern day. As I read through the many proposals to appease the slaveholders of the South, every fiber of my being was appalled at the efforts to negotiate about the monstrous evils of the slave system. Cooper's too much of a professional to indulge in counter-factuals, but you can't help but ponder them as Cooper laments the actions taken. The reader is faced with the prospect of a nation held together by compromise, one with a thirteenth amendment that didn't abolish slavery, but instead guaranteed it, making it nearly impossible to get rid of. Without saying as much, Cooper thinks the cost of avoiding the war would be worth it. It's not in the scope of the work, but the untold extended suffering of the enslaved millions isn't truly explored and weighed against the slaughter of the war. The moral calculus is left to the reader. Frankly, I don't think any attempt at compromise would have pacified the South, which revolted at the prospect of a Republican party that didn't even want to abolish slavery, but rather wished to deny slaveholders the prospect of spreading their system further into the territories. I, for one, found myself nodding along with Lincoln's frustration at the compromises cobbled together in 1820 and 1850, which only postponed reckoning and extended the horror of slavery. "Stand firm," he wrote in December 1860, urging resistance to compromise. "The tug has to come, & better now, than anytime hereafter."
Regardless, this is one of those books that's a pleasure to read, even if you disagree with the thesis. You never get the sense that Cooper's subtle argument has affected his judicious handling of the facts. He's a trustworthy and enjoyable guide, even if you take issue with his conclusions.
June 2, 2013
By focusing on a very short period of history, between the election of Lincoln and the attack on Ft. Sumter, this book fills in many details that at least for me were known only in broad outlines. Much of it is of course the interactions between the three main factions - the hard-line secessionists, the radical republicans, and the Unionists largely from the border states. The inability of Congress to come to a compromise due to entrenched positions by hard-liners is eerily reminiscent of recent Congresses. In writing a book about a period in which many related but distinct events are occurring simultaneously, presenting them in a logical and readable way is a difficult thing. A strict time order would be a boring timeline, but if one story is told completely before going back and telling another, the reader can become confused about the sequence of events unless the author provides clues, links, and reminders. In my opinion this book did far too much skipping around in many cases with no obvious reason and this is the main reason I've demoted it to three stars. If you have a very good memory and pay close attention you might not have this problem. The author also seemed to have a of a bit pro-Southern bias portraying the majority of Republicans including Lincoln as obstructionists in the face of pleas by the border states for some sort of compromise. The only Republican that comes out as the "good guy" is Seward. I'm not a historian so I don't know how well accepted this view of things is, but it isn't the impression I've gotten from previous reading. Bottom line: Very interesting book, highly recommended, a couple of caveats.
October 8, 2012
This guy is a history professor? At a real college? This book reads like that Pat Buchanan screed that claimed the British started World War II by being mean to Hitler. Rather than a history of the Secession Crisis, this is an argument for why Lincoln's intransigence is responsible for the Civil War -- because, you know, he refused to compromise with the extremists in the South who wanted to expand slavery into new territories. If only Lincoln had consigned half the western territories to the slaveholders, he could've avoided war.
December 24, 2012
An even-handed approach to the months between the 1860 presidential election and the bombardment of Ft Sumter. It focuses perhaps a bit too much on the Republican Party and Seward; more attention to the Confederates and the states would be interesting. Better written and broaded in scope than Detzer's Allegiance.
October 23, 2015
The vexing issues dividing the country fulminated for decades prior to the severance of southern states from the union. The Constitution by no means created a “more perfect union”; indeed, the seeds that sprouted into sectional discord were sown by the founders in their imperfect resolution of the matter deeply at odds with the moral principles that undergirded the republic – slavery. The Southern states were acutely aware of the disdain of their Northern neighbors for the institution upon which the Southern economy depended. By early in the 19th century slavery had disappeared from the North, but the hope that slavery would fade away in the South was not realized. The authority of each state to determine the status of slavery within its borders was unquestioned, but the question of whether slavery would expand to new territories coming under the jurisdiction of the United States created great political bitterness. Should or should not slavery be allowed in the territories and the new states to be admitted to the union from these territories? Under a national constitution that respected property rights could national laws deny individuals the use of slave property in portions of the union where slavery did not exist? What were the obligations of citizens and governments in non-slave states to aid slave holders in the recovery of their human property that had escaped their owners?
Southerners felt sorely threatened by these questions and worked diligently to maintain national political strength (the so-called Slave Power); southern fear of eclipse by a union growing of Free States dictated much of their early and mid-century political strategy. The perceived arrogance of the Slave Power in pursuit of its interests was galling to many in the North. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 sought to achieve sectional balance by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and setting a latitudinal boundary that demarked slave owning portions of the nation from non-slave areas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in the 1850’s upset the balanced compromise of 1820 by permitting territories seeking statehood to decide by popular vote whether they would be slave or free; this only exacerbated the hostilities between people on either side of the matter. The Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court heightened antagonism in the North when it determined that black people, whether free or enslaved, were not citizens of the nation. The court stipulated that Northern states and their jurisdictions were required to acknowledge and support the property rights of slave owners whose slaves had made their way to the North. The Fugitive Slave law obliged citizens everywhere to actively assist slave owners in the recovery of their escaped slaves.
This pervasive distress led to the collapse of the Whig Party and the emergence of the Republican Party, entirely a Northern party. The election of 1860 saw the victory of the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and his party were firm on the imperative of not allowing the expansion of slavery where it did not already exist. The fractured Democrats fielded two tickets – Douglas representing the Northern Democrats and Breckinridge the candidate of the Southern faction. With the inclusion of Bell, another splinter candidate, the election went to Lincoln who was by popular vote a minority president.
The South reacted sharply to the prospect of a Republican administration, particularly a radical element in South Carolina that threatened to secede from the union. While Lincoln expressed no intent to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed he stood firm on prohibiting its expansion beyond. It was the fear of what an anti-slavery administration might do rather than any hostile policy pronouncements that drove the secessionists forward. In Lincoln’s election the Slave Power saw its political strength turned on its head.
Cooper’s book takes us from November 1860 to April 1861 describing the efforts to advance or forestall the break up of the union. There were three elements of political maneuvering that emerged. Radical Southerners were bent on seceding from the union, most notably radical firebrands in South Carolina. The Carolinians began immediately to take their state and, they hoped, others out of the union. A more moderate faction looked to preserve the union via Republican concessions they felt would secure their interests, notably a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the perpetuation of slavery. A coalition comprised largely of leaders of the border slave states hoped that extending the Missouri Compromise dividing line to the far west coast (excluding California, already a free state) would satisfy the South. Some recommended admitting New Mexico or Utah as a slave states, positing that in the event slavery would never flourish in these desert regions. The Republicans, while averring they would not impinge on slavery where it already existed, held rock solid in their opposition to any extension of slavery beyond its present confines. A key player in all the machinations of the northern and border states was William Seward. Seward had lost out on the nomination for the presidency to Lincoln, but remained a powerful figure in Republican politics and destined for an important post in the Lincoln cabinet. Seward looked for compromise and worked various angles with political allies to find a way to satisfy the South while maintaining adherence to the Republican position. He did not succeed largely in the end because of Lincoln’s and other Republicans’ refusal to bend on the expansion question. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky also worked desperately to find a solution. All sides understood fully that the decision of the Upper South and Border States would be crucial to the success of secession.
The southern states called conventions to debate the question of secession.
In South Carolina the decision to secede was made within weeks of Lincoln’s election. The Carolinians worked hard to bring other states along with them. The earliest to follow were the Deep South states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Even in these states there was a substantial segment of “cooperationalists” (by most counts a majority of the population) that favored maintaining the union. These advocates of union were put off by the radicalism of the secessionists and hoped to find an acceptable compromise that would preserve the union. For the Border States, particularly Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland and Missouri the goal of settling with the South led to various plans aimed at placating the radicals. Throughout the fall and winter their proposals rose but always floundered over the matter of territorial expansion.
In the months following South Carolina’s exit from the union the potential flashpoint capturing everyone’s attention was Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. South Carolina offered to negotiate with the Buchanan administration for the purchase of the fort but the executive was unwilling to do this. He announced his intention to keep the fort as a federal installation and to shift the collection of customs tariffs off sea to the fort and the navy. The fort had a small contingent of defenders led by Major Anderson, not nearly strong enough to resist any effort to take it. Attempts to replenish the fort’s supplies or the addition of reinforcements were seen by both sides as likely to cause the outbreak of hostility. Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida, was similarly vulnerable; other federal forts were unmanned and had been seized by the rebel states without response by the government. Shortly after his inauguration Lincoln announced that he would provision Fort Sumter, soon to be out of supplies, and this triggered the attack on the fort by South Carolina. As a consequence Lincoln called up the militia and this led the wavering upper South states to take decisions to secede.
The value of Cooper’s book is not only the story of last minute efforts to either dissolve or preserve the union, although this aspect is not often given such excellent treatment. Rather, his description of the politics of these five months brings into vivid relief the long-simmering discordant issues that came finally to a boil. The fissures splitting the comity of the national union in the end defied resolution. The South became increasingly anxious about the domination of the Free States. We must remember that while many in the North were opposed to slavery, only a fairly small contingent – the Abolitionists – were bent on seeing it eliminated in the South. It was the argument about its expansion beyond the South that would be the tinder that ignited the breakup of the union. There was a strain of historical thinking in the 20th century that characterized the Civil War as fought over states’ rights; that slavery per se was not the root cause. This is a misread. The rights of the states to determine their own laws governing slavery was little in doubt, but the imperative of the South to preserve its institution was thought to require maintaining a power balance with the North that could be done only by creating more slave states as the nation expanded. (Cooper touches on ideas to enlarge the slave part of the nation southward by annexing Cuba or parts of Central America.) The matter of states’ rights is more properly examined as to whether states had the right to opt out of the union. The sentiment in the North was that once joined no state could sever its place in the union. If there was ever an argument that could be made about the divisibility of the union, the war settled it. Moreover, the notion that a nation founded on the inherent liberty of man could find and maintain a sectional balance that tolerated slavery in an otherwise free society was crushed by the carnage of the four-year conflict. Thus, the two issues that the Constitution treated most ambiguously – slavery and states’ rights – were painfully but completely clarified through our great Civil War.
Southerners felt sorely threatened by these questions and worked diligently to maintain national political strength (the so-called Slave Power); southern fear of eclipse by a union growing of Free States dictated much of their early and mid-century political strategy. The perceived arrogance of the Slave Power in pursuit of its interests was galling to many in the North. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 sought to achieve sectional balance by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and setting a latitudinal boundary that demarked slave owning portions of the nation from non-slave areas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in the 1850’s upset the balanced compromise of 1820 by permitting territories seeking statehood to decide by popular vote whether they would be slave or free; this only exacerbated the hostilities between people on either side of the matter. The Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court heightened antagonism in the North when it determined that black people, whether free or enslaved, were not citizens of the nation. The court stipulated that Northern states and their jurisdictions were required to acknowledge and support the property rights of slave owners whose slaves had made their way to the North. The Fugitive Slave law obliged citizens everywhere to actively assist slave owners in the recovery of their escaped slaves.
This pervasive distress led to the collapse of the Whig Party and the emergence of the Republican Party, entirely a Northern party. The election of 1860 saw the victory of the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and his party were firm on the imperative of not allowing the expansion of slavery where it did not already exist. The fractured Democrats fielded two tickets – Douglas representing the Northern Democrats and Breckinridge the candidate of the Southern faction. With the inclusion of Bell, another splinter candidate, the election went to Lincoln who was by popular vote a minority president.
The South reacted sharply to the prospect of a Republican administration, particularly a radical element in South Carolina that threatened to secede from the union. While Lincoln expressed no intent to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed he stood firm on prohibiting its expansion beyond. It was the fear of what an anti-slavery administration might do rather than any hostile policy pronouncements that drove the secessionists forward. In Lincoln’s election the Slave Power saw its political strength turned on its head.
Cooper’s book takes us from November 1860 to April 1861 describing the efforts to advance or forestall the break up of the union. There were three elements of political maneuvering that emerged. Radical Southerners were bent on seceding from the union, most notably radical firebrands in South Carolina. The Carolinians began immediately to take their state and, they hoped, others out of the union. A more moderate faction looked to preserve the union via Republican concessions they felt would secure their interests, notably a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the perpetuation of slavery. A coalition comprised largely of leaders of the border slave states hoped that extending the Missouri Compromise dividing line to the far west coast (excluding California, already a free state) would satisfy the South. Some recommended admitting New Mexico or Utah as a slave states, positing that in the event slavery would never flourish in these desert regions. The Republicans, while averring they would not impinge on slavery where it already existed, held rock solid in their opposition to any extension of slavery beyond its present confines. A key player in all the machinations of the northern and border states was William Seward. Seward had lost out on the nomination for the presidency to Lincoln, but remained a powerful figure in Republican politics and destined for an important post in the Lincoln cabinet. Seward looked for compromise and worked various angles with political allies to find a way to satisfy the South while maintaining adherence to the Republican position. He did not succeed largely in the end because of Lincoln’s and other Republicans’ refusal to bend on the expansion question. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky also worked desperately to find a solution. All sides understood fully that the decision of the Upper South and Border States would be crucial to the success of secession.
The southern states called conventions to debate the question of secession.
In South Carolina the decision to secede was made within weeks of Lincoln’s election. The Carolinians worked hard to bring other states along with them. The earliest to follow were the Deep South states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Even in these states there was a substantial segment of “cooperationalists” (by most counts a majority of the population) that favored maintaining the union. These advocates of union were put off by the radicalism of the secessionists and hoped to find an acceptable compromise that would preserve the union. For the Border States, particularly Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland and Missouri the goal of settling with the South led to various plans aimed at placating the radicals. Throughout the fall and winter their proposals rose but always floundered over the matter of territorial expansion.
In the months following South Carolina’s exit from the union the potential flashpoint capturing everyone’s attention was Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. South Carolina offered to negotiate with the Buchanan administration for the purchase of the fort but the executive was unwilling to do this. He announced his intention to keep the fort as a federal installation and to shift the collection of customs tariffs off sea to the fort and the navy. The fort had a small contingent of defenders led by Major Anderson, not nearly strong enough to resist any effort to take it. Attempts to replenish the fort’s supplies or the addition of reinforcements were seen by both sides as likely to cause the outbreak of hostility. Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida, was similarly vulnerable; other federal forts were unmanned and had been seized by the rebel states without response by the government. Shortly after his inauguration Lincoln announced that he would provision Fort Sumter, soon to be out of supplies, and this triggered the attack on the fort by South Carolina. As a consequence Lincoln called up the militia and this led the wavering upper South states to take decisions to secede.
The value of Cooper’s book is not only the story of last minute efforts to either dissolve or preserve the union, although this aspect is not often given such excellent treatment. Rather, his description of the politics of these five months brings into vivid relief the long-simmering discordant issues that came finally to a boil. The fissures splitting the comity of the national union in the end defied resolution. The South became increasingly anxious about the domination of the Free States. We must remember that while many in the North were opposed to slavery, only a fairly small contingent – the Abolitionists – were bent on seeing it eliminated in the South. It was the argument about its expansion beyond the South that would be the tinder that ignited the breakup of the union. There was a strain of historical thinking in the 20th century that characterized the Civil War as fought over states’ rights; that slavery per se was not the root cause. This is a misread. The rights of the states to determine their own laws governing slavery was little in doubt, but the imperative of the South to preserve its institution was thought to require maintaining a power balance with the North that could be done only by creating more slave states as the nation expanded. (Cooper touches on ideas to enlarge the slave part of the nation southward by annexing Cuba or parts of Central America.) The matter of states’ rights is more properly examined as to whether states had the right to opt out of the union. The sentiment in the North was that once joined no state could sever its place in the union. If there was ever an argument that could be made about the divisibility of the union, the war settled it. Moreover, the notion that a nation founded on the inherent liberty of man could find and maintain a sectional balance that tolerated slavery in an otherwise free society was crushed by the carnage of the four-year conflict. Thus, the two issues that the Constitution treated most ambiguously – slavery and states’ rights – were painfully but completely clarified through our great Civil War.
December 20, 2018
I appreciate the history, not the interpretation. The anti-Lincoln bias was so pointed it induced much eye-rolling.
March 30, 2018
this is one of those books where you disagree with the points that the writer's making so much that you only realize at the end that it's opened you to entirely new perspectives.
June 24, 2018
This book is interesting for the way it fills in a lot of details about events leading up to the Civil War, so I gave it three stars rather than the two I contemplated. I learned a lot of things I didn't know, but the book's interpretation is infuriatingly wrong-headed. If you read it, be sure to read critically. The author is at pains to blame Lincoln for being more loyal to his party than to the Union, forgetting that what seems to be loyalty to party may actually be loyalty to principle, especially when that party was formed around a single primary idea. In this case that principle was an objection to slavery, at least to the expansion of slavery into the territories - and this author continually blames Lincoln and others of his party for failure to compromise on that issue, the issue central to the platform that got Lincoln elected and, by the way, a monumentally important moral stance. He essentially advocates appeasement of the Confederacy. He also seems to think that because Lincoln knew the Confederacy would fire on any ship sent to relieve Fort Sumter, it was Lincoln who started the war by sending the ship, rather than the Confederacy by building up their fortifications against it and actually starting the firing. I find that an irresponsible attempt at an "original" interpretation, and it made me hate this book by the end. Here's a review that gets it right: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/book-r...
August 2, 2023
William Cooper’s We Have The War Upon Us is an account of the pre-war period after the 1860 election through Sumter in April 1861. Congress dithered and Republicans obstructed as the House formed the Committee of 33 and the Senate formed its own Committee of 13 to avoid secession and civil war. A peace commission also met, confederate envoys were dispatched to Washington DC and an effort was made to collect the four living ex-presidents to mediate. All to no avail. Lincoln was steadfast in his refusal to allow the extension of slavery into the territories, something he had campaigned on. His was the rock while his Secretary of State William Seward vacillated in trying to avoid war and hold the Upper South and Border States. Lincoln was also determined to hold forts Sumter and Pickens while his military advisors urged their evacuation. In retrospect it is difficult to believe war could have been avoided given the intransigence of the slave holding states and the determination of a newly empowered Republican government.
December 17, 2020
The author may have a pro-southern slant, but even he can’t conceal several key facts.
Southern states seceded preemptively based on no act by the president elect or congress. Merely on the fear of what might happen. Republicans at that time didn’t even expect to repeal slavery, only curb its expansion into new territories.
The new confederacy’s constitution was very close to ours, except limiting the president to a single six year term, and guarantees that slavery would exist.
Despite being informed by Lincoln that he was sending food but not munitions or troops to resupply Fort Sumter, the confederacy preemptively attacked the Fort, forcing its surrender.
So I probably can’t recommend anyone buy the book, and if they do read it use a critical eye. It definitely lays out a case for a narrow path that could have prevented the war, but it would have essentially required giving in to southern demands and perpetuating slavery indefinitely.
Southern states seceded preemptively based on no act by the president elect or congress. Merely on the fear of what might happen. Republicans at that time didn’t even expect to repeal slavery, only curb its expansion into new territories.
The new confederacy’s constitution was very close to ours, except limiting the president to a single six year term, and guarantees that slavery would exist.
Despite being informed by Lincoln that he was sending food but not munitions or troops to resupply Fort Sumter, the confederacy preemptively attacked the Fort, forcing its surrender.
So I probably can’t recommend anyone buy the book, and if they do read it use a critical eye. It definitely lays out a case for a narrow path that could have prevented the war, but it would have essentially required giving in to southern demands and perpetuating slavery indefinitely.
November 17, 2022
Thorough treatment of the efforts to prevent the Civil War in the months after Lincoln's election. A corrective to the simplistic fixation on Fort Sumter. We readers are all looking back with perfect hindsight of the cost of the war, screaming as we read "why won't they make the effort to prevent this?" Those who are only familiar with the Lincoln of 1863-65 will discover a lesser man in 1861, a party leader with limited insight into southern and border state realities. Very grateful to Professor Cooper for this book.
January 12, 2018
Interesting and detailed look at events before Fort Sumter. Shows what was going on in the capital and with our leadership. As Lee was quoted, "The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides." Lincoln did nothing from his election and until he took office to head off the war. Many Republicans welcomed it.
October 17, 2021
A good book if you’re really interested in a few events in the few months leading up to the Civil War, otherwise a challenging read. Extremely repetitive as well. There were times where I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t re-reading the same page as occasionally Cooper repeats lines verbatim.
February 24, 2020
Interesting strictly political history of 1860 and 1861.
March 15, 2020
If you ever wanted to know the minutiae that led up to that war, and are fascinated with politics and 19th century verbosity, this is the book for you.
March 5, 2017
An account of the period between the election of President Lincoln in November 1860 and his inauguration in April 1861, when as a result of the election results the US came to a Civil War.
The book describes at length the efforts taken to find a compromise between the parties, which was perhaps impossible from the start. For me, the shocking conclusion of this history is the very short timeframe in which a country can unravel, when a deep split in opinion exists.
The book describes at length the efforts taken to find a compromise between the parties, which was perhaps impossible from the start. For me, the shocking conclusion of this history is the very short timeframe in which a country can unravel, when a deep split in opinion exists.
June 27, 2015
I really enjoyed this book. It focuses on the period of time dating from Lincoln's election through to the firing on Fort Sumter. Though it was narrow in it's focus, I felt it conveyed the political issues and frustrations from each side in a very descriptive way.
After Lincoln's election, the south had strong concerns that he would attack slavery. Many people in the south believed that they had the right to own slaves, and his election was akin to an attack on their rights as defined by the Constitution. They believed in state's rights, and were fearful about the federal government going too far. There were people, who the book described as fire-eaters, who only wanted secession from the union. To that end, they did everything they could to dominate talks about whether a state should vote for secession, including intimidation, hurling insults to others that did not agree with them, and being very vocal for their cause.
On the other side, the Republicans had won the Presidency, in only their 2nd election that they ran in. Though Lincoln won only 40% of the vote, the other votes were split, leading to his victory. People that had strong beliefs across the party, and many did not want to compromise. For some people, it was because they were abolitionists. For others it was because they did not want slavery extended into new territories. For others, it was political. They just won the election, and they were not going to give into the various demands of southern politicians that were threatening secession. At the head of all this was Abraham Lincoln as the leader of the party. Whether right or wrong, he was silent from the time of his election to his inauguration about what direction he was going to go as President.
In between, there were people who were trying to find a compromise between the Republicans and Democrats. There were the Committee of 33, the Committee of 13, and the Peace Convention, but none of them succeeded. The failure was across the political spectrum - Republicans stonewalling and not willing to compromise, Democrat politicians not willing to compromise unless they received something from the Republicans, or if a compromise was proposed it would not get past the party hard-liners. There were also people on both sides who wanted to avoid war - Seward, Douglas, Crittenden, and Davis, to name just a few.
This was a pretty in-depth book that gave a lot of background information about the decisions that were made that led the country up to the Civil War. Given the partisan division in today's society, the reader will find situation familiar. Overall, I liked this book and think anyone who enjoys Civil War history and/or political science will enjoy this book too.
After Lincoln's election, the south had strong concerns that he would attack slavery. Many people in the south believed that they had the right to own slaves, and his election was akin to an attack on their rights as defined by the Constitution. They believed in state's rights, and were fearful about the federal government going too far. There were people, who the book described as fire-eaters, who only wanted secession from the union. To that end, they did everything they could to dominate talks about whether a state should vote for secession, including intimidation, hurling insults to others that did not agree with them, and being very vocal for their cause.
On the other side, the Republicans had won the Presidency, in only their 2nd election that they ran in. Though Lincoln won only 40% of the vote, the other votes were split, leading to his victory. People that had strong beliefs across the party, and many did not want to compromise. For some people, it was because they were abolitionists. For others it was because they did not want slavery extended into new territories. For others, it was political. They just won the election, and they were not going to give into the various demands of southern politicians that were threatening secession. At the head of all this was Abraham Lincoln as the leader of the party. Whether right or wrong, he was silent from the time of his election to his inauguration about what direction he was going to go as President.
In between, there were people who were trying to find a compromise between the Republicans and Democrats. There were the Committee of 33, the Committee of 13, and the Peace Convention, but none of them succeeded. The failure was across the political spectrum - Republicans stonewalling and not willing to compromise, Democrat politicians not willing to compromise unless they received something from the Republicans, or if a compromise was proposed it would not get past the party hard-liners. There were also people on both sides who wanted to avoid war - Seward, Douglas, Crittenden, and Davis, to name just a few.
This was a pretty in-depth book that gave a lot of background information about the decisions that were made that led the country up to the Civil War. Given the partisan division in today's society, the reader will find situation familiar. Overall, I liked this book and think anyone who enjoys Civil War history and/or political science will enjoy this book too.
November 2, 2015
An excellent history of the secession crisis from the Lincoln's election to Fort Sumter. Detailed, yet very entertaining to read, Cooper's approach and thesis are unique and intriguing. While he leaves no doubt that the South left the Union to protect their slave property, Cooper's interpretation is essentially an anti-war approach. This contention leads him to place a large amount of blame on Lincoln and the Republicans for failing to compromise and avoid bloody conflict. Unlike Henry Clay, Lincoln's political idol, the northern party would not offer the South any workable compromise. The main issue was the spread of slavery into the new territories. Any scheme that would offer legal protection to slavery in any part of the new territories was immediately shot down by the Republicans. Cooper blames this on Lincoln's partisanship, lack of political experience, and strong anti-slavery sentiment. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State and a very experienced politician, plays an important role in the book as one who sought to bring both sides together and find a way to compromise. He of course ultimately failed. The problem with Cooper's interpretation is clear however. Why should compromise be offered at all to slave owners? If Lincoln would have compromised on the territorial issue, there would undoubtedly be greater incentive for the spread of slavery. Still, his approach is fair and factually argued.
Cooper's criticism is on much firmer ground (in my opinion) when he critiques Lincoln's insistence on holding Fort Sumter, and then calling out troops when it failed. It is very true that if Lincoln would have let Sumter go or even waited a bit longer to seek a peaceful solution before calling out troops, the upper South would not of seceded. Without the upper south, the lower southern Confederacy would fail. Letting Sumter go peacefully would of avoided such a terrible war.
Yet, one is bound to ask, considering the context of the 1850s, if war wouldn't of come sooner or later anyway? More importantly, slavery would have definitely continued even longer without a war. No matter Lincoln's failures and poor motives, the war came. And when it that terrible conflict was over, slavery and the slave Confederacy was done for.
Cooper's criticism is on much firmer ground (in my opinion) when he critiques Lincoln's insistence on holding Fort Sumter, and then calling out troops when it failed. It is very true that if Lincoln would have let Sumter go or even waited a bit longer to seek a peaceful solution before calling out troops, the upper South would not of seceded. Without the upper south, the lower southern Confederacy would fail. Letting Sumter go peacefully would of avoided such a terrible war.
Yet, one is bound to ask, considering the context of the 1850s, if war wouldn't of come sooner or later anyway? More importantly, slavery would have definitely continued even longer without a war. No matter Lincoln's failures and poor motives, the war came. And when it that terrible conflict was over, slavery and the slave Confederacy was done for.
February 15, 2018
There is not much to say about this book. It is supposed to show the historical importance of politics before and during the Secession Crisis that preceded the Civil War. It doesn’t do its job.
This book isn’t long but damn is it hard to read. It is just a bunch of names, quotes, and dates strung together into an incoherent mess. I read this entire book for class and I honestly couldn’t tell you a single thing about it.
Don’t buy this book and if you are forced to…good luck.
This book isn’t long but damn is it hard to read. It is just a bunch of names, quotes, and dates strung together into an incoherent mess. I read this entire book for class and I honestly couldn’t tell you a single thing about it.
Don’t buy this book and if you are forced to…good luck.
October 27, 2012
A good book for people interested in the Civil War and why it started.
August 3, 2013
A most interesting assessment of the year leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in the Civil War. Brought to light many aspects that are typically ignored.
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