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Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859
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 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
472 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
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About the author
Elizabeth R. Varon
12 books32 followersElizabeth Varon (PhD, Yale University) is a professor of history at Temple University. Her research and teaching interests include the Civil War and Reconstruction, History of Women and Gender, Southern History.
FROM WEBSITE:
"Personal Statement I have sought in my work to integrate social history and women’s history with political and military history. My first book was on white women’s participation and complicity in Southern politics during the antebellum era. My recent book is a bio of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Civil War spy for the Union and pioneering advocate of women’s rights and of civil rights for African Americans. My current project is a study of the origins of the Civil War (part of a multi-author thirteen part series on the war), and seeks to integrate the rich new social history of sectionalism (particularly works on African American and women’s history) with the more traditional political narrative."
FROM WEBSITE:
"Personal Statement I have sought in my work to integrate social history and women’s history with political and military history. My first book was on white women’s participation and complicity in Southern politics during the antebellum era. My recent book is a bio of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Civil War spy for the Union and pioneering advocate of women’s rights and of civil rights for African Americans. My current project is a study of the origins of the Civil War (part of a multi-author thirteen part series on the war), and seeks to integrate the rich new social history of sectionalism (particularly works on African American and women’s history) with the more traditional political narrative."
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 30, 2010
In Disunion!, Elizabeth Varon looks at the 70 years between the founding of the Republic and the opening salvos of the Civil War, focusing on the political vocabulary in use at the time. Specifically, as the title strongly suggests, the use of the word "disunion." She argues that "disunion" was once the most provocative and potent word in American political rhetoric. "From the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 up to the Civil War, disunion conjured up the most profound anxieties of Americans as they considered the fate of their republic.... Disunion was...a keyword of the nation's political vocabulary - a word that had no fixed `content,' that captured complex ideas of values, and that served as a site for protracted moral, political, and economic conflicts in a deeply...divided nation." (p. 1-2)
Varon seeks to provide a more nuanced view of antebellum America that shows the North and South were not (at first) fundamentally antagonistic societies. Many in the North could live with slavery, their concerns were focused more on the problems of industrialization and workers' rights than on slavery per se (though it's true in the latter half of the period, the anti-slavery side raised the specter of slave-labor competition to rally support). In the South, while slavery was arguably the most important pillar of the economy, the slave-owning class was very small, and class and regional divides make blanket generalizations about the Slave Power inadequate. For example, in the years just after the Revolution plans were noised about in Virginia for the gradual emancipation of slaves (it was, unfortunately for subsequent history, never seriously pursued). Simultaneously, in the North, there was a general movement to deny the franchise to black Americans, and otherwise deny them equal status.
The author considers the idea of "disunion" in five ways:
1. Disunion as prophecy: In this guise, disunion adumbrated apocalypse. Like the prophets of Israel, American politicians bewailed the consequences of disunion (war, chaos, widespread death and terror) to encourage a final solution to the problem of slavery.
2. Disunion as a threat: An especially potent weapon in Southern rhetoric but also found in Northern quivers, the threat of disunion was used to cow political opponents. It was a threat not seriously contemplated except by the most radical partisans (such as Southerner Robert Rhett or the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionists).
3. Disunion as accusation: Here, disunion was used to accuse opponents of treason or of fomenting slave rebellions and disrupting the harmony and future prosperity of the country. As such it was used by all sides: Proslavery advocates (mostly Southerners); abolitionists, who were feared because of their radical ideas about social and gender equality (though there were degrees of commitment, as in any mass movement); and anti-abolitionists, who were antislavery in the sense that they didn't want to see its spread beyond its current limits but were against the abolitionist agenda(s).
It's important to remember that the North was not a bastion of racial equality much less a redoubt of abolitionist crusaders. Its racism could be quite as vicious as any Southerner's. Even among abolitionists and antislavery activists (e.g., Lincoln) black Americans were too often considered little children or hardly better than savages. And the best solution to the slavery problem? Return them to Africa; at the very least, keep the races apart because they could never live together.
4. Disunion as a process: In this manifestation, disunion was part of a process most clearly articulated by that great advocate of nullification and slavery as a "positive good" John C. Calhoun. He invoked disunion as a way to rally Southern and anti-abolitionist interests, and build up an impregnable consensus to resist antislavery agendas. A similar development occurred in anti-slavery circles that eventually coalesced in the late 1850s into the Republican Party.
5. Disunion as a program: As the 1850s passed and all sides became radicalized, the North painted the South as hell bent on disunion; the aggressors in a campaign to destroy the Union and perpetuate slavery in the U.S. and expand it into Latin and South America. Southerners, meanwhile, painted their Northern cousins as plotting to force the South to secede and then launch a war of conquest that would abolish slavery and destroy the Southern way of life.
"Disunion" was a far more pervasive concept than "secession." (p. 14) Secession was an end to be avoided and the horrors of disunion were constantly brought forth to discourage it. But the rhetoric of disunion only exacerbated sectional differences, and contributed to the radicalization of both sides. "Suffused as it was with images of treason, rebellion, retribution, and bloodshed, the discourse of disunion bred disillusionment with party politics; mistrust of compromise; and...the expectation that only violent conflict would resolve the debate over slavery once and for all." (p. 16)
I have written elsewhere on this site that my knowledge of U.S. history between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars is abysmal so I found this book extremely informative and well argued. Varon doesn't call for her argument to support more weight than it can and presents a fascinating and nuanced account of the factors that led up to the bloodiest conflict in American history. Inevitably, the book also invites a comparison between the politics of the era and our modern predicaments. Specific comparisons break down quickly but I chose the quote in the previous paragraph because the zeitgeist it describes in the decade before Fort Sumter could be applied to today's discourse. Americans don't yet have anything as fundamentally divisive as slavery (or as obviously immoral) to radicalize most people but the impulse to demonize opposition and the desire to paper over different interests in the interests of "bipartisanship" are alive and increasingly strong. And the question that faced our forebears is the same one facing us - Is this union ("the last, best hope of the world," to paraphrase Lincoln) worth preserving?
I'm sure better read readers can find holes in parts of Varon's argument or details to quibble about but I would recommend the book to anyone interested in this critical period in U.S. history (and read it in conjunction with Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which offers a related but broader view of the same period).
Varon seeks to provide a more nuanced view of antebellum America that shows the North and South were not (at first) fundamentally antagonistic societies. Many in the North could live with slavery, their concerns were focused more on the problems of industrialization and workers' rights than on slavery per se (though it's true in the latter half of the period, the anti-slavery side raised the specter of slave-labor competition to rally support). In the South, while slavery was arguably the most important pillar of the economy, the slave-owning class was very small, and class and regional divides make blanket generalizations about the Slave Power inadequate. For example, in the years just after the Revolution plans were noised about in Virginia for the gradual emancipation of slaves (it was, unfortunately for subsequent history, never seriously pursued). Simultaneously, in the North, there was a general movement to deny the franchise to black Americans, and otherwise deny them equal status.
The author considers the idea of "disunion" in five ways:
1. Disunion as prophecy: In this guise, disunion adumbrated apocalypse. Like the prophets of Israel, American politicians bewailed the consequences of disunion (war, chaos, widespread death and terror) to encourage a final solution to the problem of slavery.
2. Disunion as a threat: An especially potent weapon in Southern rhetoric but also found in Northern quivers, the threat of disunion was used to cow political opponents. It was a threat not seriously contemplated except by the most radical partisans (such as Southerner Robert Rhett or the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionists).
3. Disunion as accusation: Here, disunion was used to accuse opponents of treason or of fomenting slave rebellions and disrupting the harmony and future prosperity of the country. As such it was used by all sides: Proslavery advocates (mostly Southerners); abolitionists, who were feared because of their radical ideas about social and gender equality (though there were degrees of commitment, as in any mass movement); and anti-abolitionists, who were antislavery in the sense that they didn't want to see its spread beyond its current limits but were against the abolitionist agenda(s).
It's important to remember that the North was not a bastion of racial equality much less a redoubt of abolitionist crusaders. Its racism could be quite as vicious as any Southerner's. Even among abolitionists and antislavery activists (e.g., Lincoln) black Americans were too often considered little children or hardly better than savages. And the best solution to the slavery problem? Return them to Africa; at the very least, keep the races apart because they could never live together.
4. Disunion as a process: In this manifestation, disunion was part of a process most clearly articulated by that great advocate of nullification and slavery as a "positive good" John C. Calhoun. He invoked disunion as a way to rally Southern and anti-abolitionist interests, and build up an impregnable consensus to resist antislavery agendas. A similar development occurred in anti-slavery circles that eventually coalesced in the late 1850s into the Republican Party.
5. Disunion as a program: As the 1850s passed and all sides became radicalized, the North painted the South as hell bent on disunion; the aggressors in a campaign to destroy the Union and perpetuate slavery in the U.S. and expand it into Latin and South America. Southerners, meanwhile, painted their Northern cousins as plotting to force the South to secede and then launch a war of conquest that would abolish slavery and destroy the Southern way of life.
"Disunion" was a far more pervasive concept than "secession." (p. 14) Secession was an end to be avoided and the horrors of disunion were constantly brought forth to discourage it. But the rhetoric of disunion only exacerbated sectional differences, and contributed to the radicalization of both sides. "Suffused as it was with images of treason, rebellion, retribution, and bloodshed, the discourse of disunion bred disillusionment with party politics; mistrust of compromise; and...the expectation that only violent conflict would resolve the debate over slavery once and for all." (p. 16)
I have written elsewhere on this site that my knowledge of U.S. history between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars is abysmal so I found this book extremely informative and well argued. Varon doesn't call for her argument to support more weight than it can and presents a fascinating and nuanced account of the factors that led up to the bloodiest conflict in American history. Inevitably, the book also invites a comparison between the politics of the era and our modern predicaments. Specific comparisons break down quickly but I chose the quote in the previous paragraph because the zeitgeist it describes in the decade before Fort Sumter could be applied to today's discourse. Americans don't yet have anything as fundamentally divisive as slavery (or as obviously immoral) to radicalize most people but the impulse to demonize opposition and the desire to paper over different interests in the interests of "bipartisanship" are alive and increasingly strong. And the question that faced our forebears is the same one facing us - Is this union ("the last, best hope of the world," to paraphrase Lincoln) worth preserving?
I'm sure better read readers can find holes in parts of Varon's argument or details to quibble about but I would recommend the book to anyone interested in this critical period in U.S. history (and read it in conjunction with Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which offers a related but broader view of the same period).
March 25, 2018
The issue of secession and disunion wasn't just a problem during the Civil War Era. Varon shows from numerous letters and publications that "for many Americans in the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare (pg 1)" and a fear from the start of the republic. The worst accusation one could receive in antebellum America was that of a dis-unionist. Many opponents (from north and south) used this denunciation against each other in debates, newspaper articles, and the floor of Congress.
The American parties disagreed over tariffs, expansion, and internal improvements, but there was one issue that brought fears (and eventually threats) of disunion to a boiling point: slavery. Varon argues "that from the very founding of the United States, the 'question of Union or Disunion' was inseparable from the issue of slavery's destiny" and that "slavery as a political issue did not displace other disunion anxieties-it encompassed them (pg 337-338)." Through hundreds of quotes from northern and southerner newspapers, lawmakers, activists, and politicians, her point is well argued and exhaustive. Issue after issue slavery seemed to come up and cause strife. Beginning especially with the annexation of Texas, every major issue had to deal with the "destiny" of slavery.
It is also interesting how many Southerners viewed disunion with fear and believed it to be treason. They howled at those involved in the Hartford Convention and threatened war. Southern congressmen blasted their South Carolina brethren during the nullification crisis. However, as their power waned and slavery seemed to be threatened by the more populous north, a few begin to promote secession. Only until the tumultuous 1850's and especially after the John Brown affair did the "fire eaters" become popular. Even then, many in the South hated disunion.
One issue I have with this book is that Varon only briefly explains why the idea of disunion caused so much fear. She does state that "American disunion anxieties were shaped by Enlightenment writings on the inevitable decline of republics into tyranny, by the events of the English civil war and the French Revolution, and by the intrigues and strife of the European monarchies (pg 15)." This statement is loaded and very helpful, but a good chapter developing this would have been very beneficial. That said, this is an excellent book and I will probably turn back to it often.
The American parties disagreed over tariffs, expansion, and internal improvements, but there was one issue that brought fears (and eventually threats) of disunion to a boiling point: slavery. Varon argues "that from the very founding of the United States, the 'question of Union or Disunion' was inseparable from the issue of slavery's destiny" and that "slavery as a political issue did not displace other disunion anxieties-it encompassed them (pg 337-338)." Through hundreds of quotes from northern and southerner newspapers, lawmakers, activists, and politicians, her point is well argued and exhaustive. Issue after issue slavery seemed to come up and cause strife. Beginning especially with the annexation of Texas, every major issue had to deal with the "destiny" of slavery.
It is also interesting how many Southerners viewed disunion with fear and believed it to be treason. They howled at those involved in the Hartford Convention and threatened war. Southern congressmen blasted their South Carolina brethren during the nullification crisis. However, as their power waned and slavery seemed to be threatened by the more populous north, a few begin to promote secession. Only until the tumultuous 1850's and especially after the John Brown affair did the "fire eaters" become popular. Even then, many in the South hated disunion.
One issue I have with this book is that Varon only briefly explains why the idea of disunion caused so much fear. She does state that "American disunion anxieties were shaped by Enlightenment writings on the inevitable decline of republics into tyranny, by the events of the English civil war and the French Revolution, and by the intrigues and strife of the European monarchies (pg 15)." This statement is loaded and very helpful, but a good chapter developing this would have been very beneficial. That said, this is an excellent book and I will probably turn back to it often.
March 20, 2025
Excellent book about the history of the United States from the adoption of our Constitution up to the beginning of the Civil War. It is well written, well documented, and very interesting. Varon does an excellent job in detailing the events leading up to the Civil War. It seems the country was heading towards civil war right from the signing of the Constitution. I have read many books dealing with the Civil War, and the various reasons as to why it happened. While there are several reasons, such as States Rights, conflict over tariffs, among others, but the overwhelming reason for the Civil War was the institution of slavery. Perhaps the greatest conflict over the concept of slavery was not the existence of slavery itself, but whether or not it should be allowed to expand into new territories/states. There were so many conflicting opinions by those in both the North and the South as to how to rectify these differences. Should slavery be totally abolished? Should slavery be made legal everywhere? Should slavery be allowed where it existed, but not allowed to expand. Both sides accused the other side of favoring disunion. Eventually, the inevitable occurred and we went into civil war. What totally amazes me when I read about this time in our history, is that there were actually so many people who thought the institution of slavery was just fine. In fact, there were may who not only thought it was fine, but thought it was morally the right thing, and a good thing. It boggles the mind.
October 18, 2023
Elizabeth R. Varon's Disunion! is a useful and informative history of the United States from the adoption of the Constitution to the eve of the Civil War, from a focused perspective. Varon shows how even in the halcyon days of the republic, there were seeds of the discord that later led to fatal "Disunion!" I was especially intrigued to learn more about the debates that led to, for instance, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which were outside the scope of Allan Nevins's magisterial Ordeal of the Union series. Varon's treatment of this history, it must be said, pales in comparison with what Nevins was able to achieve for the Civil War era. She mainly reckons with secondary sources, while Nevins evidently pored through the Congressional Record, personal correspondence, and other primary sources in his reconstruction of history. But I've never read another historian who can match Nevins in this regard. Disunion! is still well worth reading and adds depth to our understanding of American history.
August 31, 2011
Elizabeth Varon is one of the greatest living historians of the sociopolitical history of the Civil War and she is able to tell the epic political drama leading up to the chasm between North and South in this book. While other contemporary Civil War books seem either to focus on tactical histories (battle books) or look at narrow sociological aspects of the war, Varon takes on the sweeping narrative of how the USA was able to split literaly in half and how a complex brew of issues lead up to the Civil War. No other single volume I've found covers this side of the war in such detail and clarity, and I say that as someone who used to review Civil War books for a regional publication.
July 27, 2011
There isn't a lot new in this book for antebellum historians, but it was a good read for undergrads.
August 10, 2018
I am a huge Civil War buff. Most of the books that I've read are on the Civil War era. (Although I prefer the politics/culture over the battles).
This is perhaps the best written account of the events leading up to the Civil War that I've seen. Varon does an excellent job at presenting the facts and issues in such a manner that they are clear and concise. She argues that the word "Disunion" had been brandished about from the start of the union until the Civil War and not just by the South. There were plenty of Northerners who felt that supporting slave states was a stain on Northern hands and that the only way to be cleansed would be to cut the south off.
She argues that the word itself was used in several manners:
1) As a prediction of things to come.
2) As a threat to achieve one's goal
3) As a means to forceably remove a state from the body.
4) As a procedure to peacefully remove another from the Union.
5) As an insult or attack on other people.
It covers a number of characters whose roles in this process might have been forgotten/overlooked. It also helps provide a clearer understanding as to why the Republican Party had become such firm Unionist leading up to Lincoln. Since the Democrats had cornered the political market on preserving the Union, they used the Abolitionist bent of the Republican party as an attack to drive people away from them. As a result, the Republican Party found itself defending itself as pro-Union. Preserving the Union became one the primary messages of the Republican Party, so while they might have opposed Slavery, their first mission was to preserve the Union. When the South seceded, Lincoln had very little choice but to go to war based upon the stance the party had taken.
This is perhaps the best written account of the events leading up to the Civil War that I've seen. Varon does an excellent job at presenting the facts and issues in such a manner that they are clear and concise. She argues that the word "Disunion" had been brandished about from the start of the union until the Civil War and not just by the South. There were plenty of Northerners who felt that supporting slave states was a stain on Northern hands and that the only way to be cleansed would be to cut the south off.
She argues that the word itself was used in several manners:
1) As a prediction of things to come.
2) As a threat to achieve one's goal
3) As a means to forceably remove a state from the body.
4) As a procedure to peacefully remove another from the Union.
5) As an insult or attack on other people.
It covers a number of characters whose roles in this process might have been forgotten/overlooked. It also helps provide a clearer understanding as to why the Republican Party had become such firm Unionist leading up to Lincoln. Since the Democrats had cornered the political market on preserving the Union, they used the Abolitionist bent of the Republican party as an attack to drive people away from them. As a result, the Republican Party found itself defending itself as pro-Union. Preserving the Union became one the primary messages of the Republican Party, so while they might have opposed Slavery, their first mission was to preserve the Union. When the South seceded, Lincoln had very little choice but to go to war based upon the stance the party had taken.
February 3, 2017
A good book, providing a detailed overview of the sectional debates over slavery from the foundation of the U.S. to the eve of the Civil War. Southern secession is presented not as a sudden move in 1860 but instead the culmination of a long trend of threats to use disunion as a tool to force concessions. I was surprised at the extent to which the northern abolitionists also used the threat of disunion to achieve their goals. A great book for understanding how sectional differences arise and come to dominate national politics.
May 22, 2022
Well, I found this replete with information. I only gave it three stars because it was more of a running play-by-play and rather scattered. It went from "he said" to "he said", and from "this happened, then this happened", without a much analysis or organization into edible chunks.
It is a thorough replay of what went on and who said what, I suppose. I found it a bit dizzying trying to digest it. Perhaps that's as much a problem of mine as a reader (ADD).
It is a thorough replay of what went on and who said what, I suppose. I found it a bit dizzying trying to digest it. Perhaps that's as much a problem of mine as a reader (ADD).
December 10, 2020
I learned some things but this was quite a slog for me. To be fair, I listened as audiobook and did not like the narrator, but the content itself seemed lacking. It just felt like 75% of the words were not imparting useful information nor aesthetically valuable.
February 18, 2019
Content wise it was fine, the fact that it was entirely chronological was great, I just can't remove the fact of how hard it was to read from my opinion of it.
April 28, 2020
A useful book--I think I took 10 years to finish it though.
February 21, 2025
I enjoyed this synthesis of early 19th-century history. This book helps to illustrate how the events that sparked the U.S. Civil War had been brewing since 1776.
June 30, 2025
So much about this time in our history that has been overlooked. This is a very good book focusing on the events that lead to the Civil War. Great book.
August 30, 2012
A masterful account of the sociopolitical circumstances that lead to the unthinkable: the coming of the American Civil War. Varon, an astute historian, writes in engaging, clear, prose that is well-suited to a general but interested readership however her research is heavy enough to make this book an essential one for serious scholars of the Civil War, too. Moreover, Varon considers the concepts of "disunion" and "secession" in a robust way that entertains all aspects of states' rights and how the feelings of both political leaders and general citizens brought about an easy association with the concept of loyal leanings to the state but less powerful feelings—or even understanding—of the union of states.
A lot of Varon's emphasis is on play-by-plays and detailed, personal, accounts from first-person sources of what was happening prior to the Civil War: the feelings of planters, politicians, and others about economic and governmental issues. This is the stuffing the casual reader expects to find in his turkey, but for the more serious student of history Varon also provides a very well-crafted, innovative, and original analysis of what she sees as the epistemology of disunion. She is not a revisionist, but she does broker in the language of the post-structural scholar in places, albeit in a watered-down way. Her tenor is always one of exploration, but she does lay out a five-point thesis of what she considers "disunion" to be and from there explores how it was manifest prior, and during, the American Civil War.
A lot of Varon's emphasis is on play-by-plays and detailed, personal, accounts from first-person sources of what was happening prior to the Civil War: the feelings of planters, politicians, and others about economic and governmental issues. This is the stuffing the casual reader expects to find in his turkey, but for the more serious student of history Varon also provides a very well-crafted, innovative, and original analysis of what she sees as the epistemology of disunion. She is not a revisionist, but she does broker in the language of the post-structural scholar in places, albeit in a watered-down way. Her tenor is always one of exploration, but she does lay out a five-point thesis of what she considers "disunion" to be and from there explores how it was manifest prior, and during, the American Civil War.
December 9, 2011
A well written book on the topic of Disunion. Disunion is a term applied to the process by which the United States drifted into the American Civil War. Because it is such a large topic, she approaches the topic by concentrating on abolition and the political processes driven by it.
All history books are not only a description of their topic, but also a product of their times and places. Varon therefore adds her insight into women's roles in the DisUnion process by explaining how women participated in the debate and how it fit into the social structure of the period. Even though I am not a student of gender studies, I found her insight very illuminating and helpful, but not distracting or disruptive of the flow of the book.
In short, I found book well written and very helpful in understanding the period and the process of DisUnion. As in any history, Varon had to decide what material to discuss and what to cut out. I feel that she did a wonderful job in her choices. Those decisions, along with her very good writing, made the book flow for this reader, kept his focus on the large picture, and kept his interest on a very important story in American History.
All history books are not only a description of their topic, but also a product of their times and places. Varon therefore adds her insight into women's roles in the DisUnion process by explaining how women participated in the debate and how it fit into the social structure of the period. Even though I am not a student of gender studies, I found her insight very illuminating and helpful, but not distracting or disruptive of the flow of the book.
In short, I found book well written and very helpful in understanding the period and the process of DisUnion. As in any history, Varon had to decide what material to discuss and what to cut out. I feel that she did a wonderful job in her choices. Those decisions, along with her very good writing, made the book flow for this reader, kept his focus on the large picture, and kept his interest on a very important story in American History.
August 7, 2012
Argues that "disunion" was a potent keyword of malleable meaning in the period between the Revolution and the Civil War. Varon traces disunion rhetoric from the First Congress debate over immediately ending the slave trade through to the climactic bloody prophesy of John Brown. Very good discussion of the political maneuvering around topics such as the Wilmot Proviso, and of the outrageously gendered debate about them. Varon also features the rarely-discussed intertwining of free speech issues with slavery and disunion positions in the political tactics of the period. Not much has changed in nearly 200 years with regard to political expressions capitalizing on gender, race, and to what extent speech about them should be limited for the sake of civic harmony.
Pomo enough for the prestige mass-market, but also solid history that can stand next to Battle Cry of Freedom for the antecedents to the War.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...
Pomo enough for the prestige mass-market, but also solid history that can stand next to Battle Cry of Freedom for the antecedents to the War.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...
July 28, 2023
I was assigned this book as part of a graduate program. I previously studied the military side of the American Civil War and taught the main points to 8th graders, so my knowledge of the social, economic and political side is limited. Disunion is extensively researched, well written and approachable by any audience. Professor Varon sets out to explain how Antebellum America almost broke apart multiple times with the threat of disunion always looming. BOTH sides threatened to tear the country apart multiple times in order to get their way and finally, there was no compromise. An exceptional contribution to the study of History, Disunion encouraged me to seek out more works by Professor Varon and expand my list of trusted authors.
April 7, 2013
This book provides a useful overview of the political rhetoric in use between about 1820 and the Civil War. Varon's decision to structure her analysis around the concept of "disunion" and its five different purposes (e.g. prophecy, threat, accusation, process, and program) is a welcome break from the typical chronological slog through political history. I also appreciated that Varon was able to chart party shifts while not losing site of the larger political (e.g. non-party) context in which these debates played out-- something especially important in the antebellum era when abolitionists and women's rights reformers put a tremendous amount of pressure on political parties.
The book is at its strongest when it tightly focuses on the concept of "disunion." Unfortunately, this analytical category sometimes gets lost in the political history Varon needs to cover.
The book is at its strongest when it tightly focuses on the concept of "disunion." Unfortunately, this analytical category sometimes gets lost in the political history Varon needs to cover.
July 1, 2014
The book tracks the discussion of slavery and disunion -- inextricably linked -- during the 80 years from the writing of the Constitution to the election of Abraham Lincoln. While most of the authors of the Constitution believed slavery would and should fade away, the pro slavery and anti slavery positions hardened over time. While very few Americans would have accepted disunion in 1789, by 1859 enough in the south did so that states seceded from the Union. Varon tracks the history of this transition in some detail. The book is not for everyone, but it raises very important issues of how destructive war can arise in a democracy as a result of hardening of beliefs, some of which are both incorrect and immoral, and unwillingness to negotiate and compromise.
Here is a longer review on my blog. http://stconsultant.blogspot.com/2014...
Here is a longer review on my blog. http://stconsultant.blogspot.com/2014...
January 14, 2013
Elizabeth Varon examines how the concept of disunion was chronically a part of antebellum politics--and not just by southerners. She observes, "Disunion was invoked by Americans, across the political spectrum, in five registers: as a prophecy of national ruin, a threat of withdrawal from the federal compact, an accusation of treasonous plotting, a process of sectional alienation, and a program for regional independence" (5). As a recent work, it contains contemporary scholarship. This work is insightful and adds to one's understanding of the causes of the Civil War regardless of prior knowledge. While highly detailed, the book still provides a smooth narrative.
December 8, 2010
i read probably half of this, and don't remember much about it. it's extremely straight-forward and is easy to read. it mixes the political with the social and paints a relatively complete picture. i recommend it for anyone who likes learning about sectionalism and just how different americans pretend to be.
February 29, 2012
An interesting look at the role rhetoric played in the coming of the Civil War. A really dense text that at times can be hard to slog through. All in all a interesting twist on a topic with a lot of writing on it. Provides an interesting argument about the role of desire for disunion to prove a point ultimately led to the war. Worth the read, really interesting sources.
January 21, 2015
A very readable review of the political and social factors that led to threats of disunion in the 19th century. The book provides an interesting perspective on the ways that gender roles/expectations, and works of fiction impacted deteriorating north-south relations.
October 12, 2016
Very dense, sometimes I lost track of the big picture. Nevertheless, after rereading several times it gives great insight on the diversity of the antebellum south, especially regarding the role of women and abolitionists in crafting disunion rhetoric.
July 16, 2009
This is a very thought-provoking new look at what seems like an old subject.
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September 29, 2015Great political history of the origins of the Civil War.
December 7, 2016
It started out strong but I just wasn't feeling it by the end. Good argument, but hella long book.
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