The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North

by Neely

In 1863, Union soldiers from Illinois threatened to march from the battlefield to their state capital. Springfield had not been seized by the Rebels--but the state government was in danger of being captured by the Democrats.

In The Union Divided , Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark E. Neely, Jr., vividly recounts the surprising story of political conflict in the North during the Civil War. Examining party conflict as viewed through the lens of the developing war, the excesses of party patronage, the impact of wartime elections, the highly partisan press, and the role of the loyal opposition, Neely deftly dismantles the argument long established in Civil War scholarship that the survival of the party system in the North contributed to its victory.

The many positive effects attributed to the party system were in fact the result of the fundamental operation of the Constitution, in particular a four-year president who was commander in chief. In several ways, the party system actually undermined the Northern war effort; Americans uneasy about normal party operations in the abnormal circumstances of civil war saw near-treason in the loyal opposition.

Engagingly written and brilliantly argued, The Union Divided is an insightful and original contribution to Civil War studies and American political history.

Genres: History, Civil War

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 2002

Reviews

[Kingpin543]

This is a fairly small book concerning party politics in the United States (that is, the North, or Union) during the Civil War. Basically the author sets out to disprove what he says is/was the prevailing opinion among historians that the two-party "system" helped the Union win the Civil War vs. the single-party Confederacy. To me this is something of a straw-man, since I never thought that in the first place, nor was I aware that it was somehow the consensus view of academic historians.

The book does provide some interesting information about the operation of the Republican and (especially) Democratic parties during the Civil War. After a brief period of non-partisan support for the war effort, when it became obvious that the war would last more than a few months, the out-of-office Democrats began to organize for the Congressional and state elections of 1862. It then became a question of: at what point does political opposition to the incumbent party become support for the country's enemies -- a not irrelevant question for our own times.

[Evan Þ.]

This's Neely's previous book about partisanship in the Union during the Civil War. He emphasizes the same theme that many people thought partisanship should pause during a war, but the Democrats had a strong drive to preserve themselves as a party.

Further, he argues that people's apocalyptic rhetoric on both sides was very sincere: that the Democrats who accused Republicans of being tyrants, and the Republicans who accused Democrats of being traitors (significantly not including President Lincoln), truly believed that. This's easy for me to believe, since I've come to the same conclusion about the Federalists and Republicans of the 1790's, and the Civil War was an equally unprecedented and even more apocalyptic time.

Also, Neely's stories and his observations about the Constitution and Presidential power are very interesting.

[Peter Lindstrom]

By the author's admission, more of a collection of organized stories, anecdotes & accounts than a definitive study, along with a plea for more research but Neely goes a long way in dispelling the popular historical conception that the Union's two-party system was an important factor in wining the Civil War. Neely shows how modern historians impose our 20th-21st century party system onto the 1860s, when the political/federal government system was still evolving & doing so in competition with state governments & political bosses. Neely concludes (among other findings) that Lincoln's expanding federal rule via the Constitution was likely far more important that the election process. Neely's best evidence that elections were less important to the war effort than is commonly believed is his account of actual campaign materials (including some Lincoln was aware of) from the presidential election of 1864, which far from being uplifting, shows both parties at their worst: Republicans, refusing to concede any mistakes by their goverment & to protect their many incompetent, politically-appointed generals, campaigned that Democrats were traitors & promised to lock them up after the election, while avoiding taking any responsibility for failure through xenophobic rants about foreign conspiracies & sustained anti-semitic campaign against American Jews, who controlled the banking system for foreign powers. Democrats weren't as organized but some of their more prominent campaign material blamed immigrants & also accused Republicans of forcing whites to accept African-Americans in every aspect of life, from churches (many denominations of the era opposed "race mixing") to marriage—while those attacks sound eerily like ones used today against immigrants & marriage equality, Neely keeps his focus how on19th century values were different that ours & how we need a deeper understanding of political & social life in the Union during the war.