The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861

The New American Nation Series

by David Morris Potter, Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

“David M. Potter’s magisterial The Impending Crisis is the single best account to date of the coming of the Civil War.” —Civil War History

“The magnum opus of a great American historian.” —Newsweek

Now in a new edition for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, David Potter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of antebellum America offers an indispensible analysis of the causes of the war between the states. The Journal of Southern History calls Potter’s incisive account, “modern scholarship’s most comprehensive account of the coming of the Civil War,” and the New York Times Book Review hails it as “profound and original…. History in the grand tradition.”


Running Time: 22 hr., 41 min.

Genres: History, Civil War, American History, Nonfiction, American Civil War, Politics, Audiobook

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

David Morris Potter was an American historian of the South.

Potter posthumously won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History

His most famous work was published posthumously.

*Do not rely on publication date vs. date of death for correct attribution.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Slavery presented an inescapable ethical question which precipitated a sharp conflict of values. It constituted a vast economic interest…The stakes were large in the rivalry of slavery and freedom for ascendancy in the territories. Also, slavery was basic to the cultural divergence of North and South, because it was inextricably fused into the key elements of southern life – the staple crop and plantation system, the social and political ascendancy of the planter class, the authoritarian system of social control. Similarly, slavery shaped southern economic features in such a way as to accentuate their clash with those of the North. The southern commitment to the use of slave labor inhibited economic diversification and industrialization and strengthened the tyranny of King Cotton…”
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861

David Potter’s sweeping, epic, and award-winning The Impending Crisis presents a long look at America from the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 to the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861. It tells the story of how the suppurating wound of slavery finally infected the whole of the United States, causing a rupture that resulted in a bloody four-year war, decades of legalized racism, and enormous efforts on behalf of civil rights activists to even begin to heal.

The work, of course, is still not done. In trying to see a way forward, it is often helpful to use the past as a guide, if for no other reason than to help define the problem. To that end, for anyone seeking a fuller picture of how things came to be as they are with regard to race in America, The Impending Crisis is indispensable reading. It provides both wide coverage and sharp analysis as it traces the role of slavery in antebellum American politics – and how that all culminated in a war we are still trying to resolve.

The Impending Crisis begins with the apotheosis of early-American nationalism. As we open, General Winfield Scott’s invading army has already demolished the Mexican forces in its path, marched into Mexico City, and forced Mexico to sign a treaty ceding enormous tracts of land in exchange for cash.

In a way, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo turned into a poisoned chalice. No sooner had America received the deed of title than the issue of slavery – whether these newly-acquired lands would be free or not – rose with an uncontrolled ferocity. The issue which had been patched over since the signing of the Constitution could no longer be ignored. As Potter notes, David Wilmot set the limits of the question with his famous proviso banning slavery in these new territories. The resulting firestorm saw nationalism give way to sectionalism, and sectionalism to secession.

In these tumultuous years, Potter devotes space to the Compromise of 1850, the saga of Bleeding Kansas, and the failed revolt at Harper’s Ferry. He traces the metamorphosis of the various political parties, as northern and southern Democrats split, the Whigs died, and the Republican Party was born (from the ashes of various other single-issue parties). Potter follows Stephen Douglas as his attempts to secure a western railroad leads him to make dangerous political calculations. He touches on the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott, and follows Lincoln and Douglas during their famous debates. There’s even room given to attempts to annex Cuba in order to facilitate the spread of slavery to more hospitable climes. (The filibusterer William Walker deserves his own updated biography).

This is a comprehensive book, but it approaches its many topics from the constrained angle of politics. There is a lot of talking, but not much action. Moreover, this is a volume that is heavy on analysis, and rather light on narrative. Accordingly, its prose can be a bit heavy at times, as Potter expounds on his concepts:

The importance of slavery…is evident…in its polarizing effect upon the sections. No other sectional factor could have brought about this effect in the same way. Culturally, the dualism of a democratic North and an aristocratic South was not complete, for the North had its quota of blue-bloods and grandees who felt an affinity with those of the South, and the South had its backwoods democrats, who resented the lordly airs of the planters. Similarly, the glib antithesis of a dynamic “commercial” North and a static “feudal” South cannot conceal the profoundly commercial and capitalistic impulses of the plantation system. But slavery really had a polarizing effect, for the North had no slaveholders – at least not of resident slaves – and the South had virtually no abolitionists.

Looking simply at the prose, this is not the kind of wordsmithing that’s going to knock your socks off, studded as it is with academic phrases much-loved by professors.

(It should be noted that Potter died before this book was finished. It was completed and edited by Don Fehrenbacher, and later won the Pulitzer Prize).

While this is far from unreadable, there are points where The Impending Crisis gets really slow and dense. This goes beyond the heaviness of the sentences. Specifically, you can only discuss the differences between 19th century political parties for so long before it feels necessary to take a break. By focusing on the politics, the narrative possibilities of, say, John Brown and Bleeding Kansas, are lost. This focus also tends to make slavery – which is this book’s chief subject – into something of an abstract concept. Potter is concerned with ideas, principles, competing ideologies; he spends no time imagining the actual physical consequences of slavery, which makes some of his statements (such as those regarding the Underground Railroad) irritatingly glib.

(I would recommend The Half Has Never Been Told and River of Dark Dreams as examples of books that take a different tact, focusing on the experiences of the enslaved, while sharpening the rhetoric).

Every once in a while, though, Potter (or Fehrenbacher) will get on a roll, and the words take flight, and The Impending Crisis becomes magnetic. I loved, for instance, the description of the great debate over the Compromise of 1850:

Here, for the last time together, appeared a triumvirate of old men, relics of a golden age, who still towered like giants above the creatures of a later time: Webster, the kind of senator that Richard Wagner might have created at the height of his powers; Calhoun, the most majestic champion of error since Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost; and Clay, the old Conciliator, who had already saved the Union twice and now came out of retirement to save it with his silver voice and his master touch once again before he died.

If the recent movement to remove monuments relating to slavery have shown us anything, it is that while we may be done with the Civil War, the Civil War is not done with us. In order to understand the years between 1861-1865 – and the legacy those years have given us – we must study the decades that came before. The Impending Crisis can be heavy at times, but it is thorough, fair, and demonstrates with exactitude that all roads to civil war went through slavery.

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To Lincoln, public attitudes were part of the complex of deterministic forces which set the limits of possible action" (see page 347).

Historical works like The Impending Crisis by David M Potter are important to America because it is essential that Americans realize that our founding fathers and mothers were not cut from whole cloth. They were definitely not born fully formed and mature. They were not unchangeable.

Way too often Americans have fabricated a mythology about our founders, and we have failed to recognize that they were creatures of their own time, place, and experience. The best of our founders, e.g., Franklin, Washington, & Lincoln, were able to grow and mature as they gained experience. Take Lincoln, for example. On pages 344-346, we learn that in 1854, Lincoln suggested that slaves should be slowly emancipated over a one hundred year period. Fortunately, time and circumstance changed Lincoln's views regarding emancipation.

Although it is important that American citizens have an accurate perception of American history, it is absolutely imperative that our Supreme Court Justices do not live in a fantasy world of their own creation. As we learned from Laurence Tribe's Uncertain Justice book: "When [the Republican justices on the Roberts court] talk about the framers, they often borrow mythical narratives that their predecessors fabricated decades ago..." (see page 126 of Tribe's book).

It is widely believed that from 1836 to 1864, Roger B. Taney was the worst Supreme Court Chief Justice the USA has ever had and that Earl Warren (1953-1969) was unquestionably the best. Next, I'll be reading Jim Newton's book titled Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made. I'll meet you again on page 519 of Newton's book, and we can continue this conversation.

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. Quoted from A final message from John Lewis published in The New York Times shortly before his death on July 17, 2020.

Hindsight, the historian’s chief asset and his main liability, has enabled all historical writers to know that the decade of the fifties terminated in a great civil war. Knowing it, they have consistently treated the decade not as a segment of time with a character of its own, but as a prelude to something else. By the very term “antebellum” they have diagnosed a whole period in the light of what came after. (Page 145)

This is an extraordinary book covering an extraordinary period of American History.

In the 10-12 years covered here the country lurched from crisis to crisis. Because the Senate and Supreme Court were dominated by Southerners, the issues were usually resolved in favor of the South. However, these were hollow victories as they alienated the public opinion and weakened one of its strengths — the Democratic party.

There are so many interesting sections and chapters here that it is difficult to pick a favorite to describe. The author shines as a historian by the description, analysis and observations he makes about the events during this decade. He gives a presentation of all the sides to the events and situations. History should not just be a recitation of facts and events of a period.

The main theme of the book is the sectionalism that divided the country and its politics. There were always sections of the country in conflict with other sections. This occurred between the East and West, the Whigs and Democrats and the North and South, but the biggest conflict was between the pro and anti slavery factions. The South was forced to defend the institution of slavery against the opinion of the rest of the world. However the issue of slavery which has dominated the conversation about the Civil War was not entirely true. Although there were no or few slaves in the North and an established institution in the South the conflict was not over the slavery of Negroes, but became a conflict over the issue of slavery in the territories. The South could not allow the North to become more dominate in the government by gaining representation from new states in the West.

How much did the slavery issue really play here? He points out that even after emancipation the life of the Negro did not change. There is much evidence that the northerners and anti-slavery movement were not pro-Negro.

After the Nat Turner slave revolution and the brutal slave revolt on the island of Santo Domingo southern slave owners had good reason to fear slave insurrections. Then the John Brown attempt at Harpers Ferry led southerners to believe northern abolitionists were encouraging slaves to revolt. The author spends some time dealing with John Brown who following his attempt at Harpers Ferry was praised in the North, but given the atrocities that were visited upon the slaves following his attempt he deserves our condemnation.

The book is reminiscence of “old-school” history books (it was published in 1977). There is a quote on the cover of the book by Eric Foner calling it “history in the grand tradition”. It is heavily footnoted and I found these somewhat disruptive to the flow of the narrative, however, occasionally reading certain ones added important information.

Much is made of the “Compromise of 1850”. Included in this compromise was the Fugitive Slave Act. This part of the compromise inflamed the passions of many in the North especially the abolitionists. This leads to a discussion of the Underground Railway. There is evidence that the count of the slaves rescued this way was exaggerated. However, the compromise did give the North a chance to prepare for a war they were unprepared for.

There is an interesting account of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the book said to have been responsible for the Civil War. The author reports that the book lacked the qualifications of such a literary success. However, there is no doubt of its impact on the public’s attitude towards slavery.

It is pointed out that the southerners with their states rights politics were also pushing the “manifest destiny” policy. Their desire to acquire Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua was ironic given the fact they did not want the United States government in their own states.

A chapter on “Bleeding Kansas” asks why the pro-slavery faction fought for an area into which there were no plans (or at least very little) for slaves. This seemed to be a policy they followed which gave them small victories but lost the battle for the public’s sympathy.

There was one more interesting event which I must mention given our current administration. Late in the Buchanan administration saw the first congressional investigation into some of the activities of administrative officials. The Democratic party had voted large appropriations to groups expected to then make large contributions to the party. The Secretary of War favored friends with government contracts, and President Buchanan denied an event for which there was proof of his approval. Any of this sound familiar?

One of the more interesting chapters was “The Nature of Southern Separation”. Although the rest of the book is largely a history of events, this chapter is more of an essay (albeit a long one) on Southern Nationalism. The philosophies of the southerners regarding how to protect their culture and institutions are examined. The main issue is whether these can be protected within or without the Union.

The John Lewis quote above advises reading history to understand the path taken by the African-Americans in the quest for equality in this country. This book is a huge contribution to that understanding. Seventy-five years after the end of World War II the nazi swastika is generally considered a symbol of hate and is unacceptable for public display. Over 150 years after the end of the Civil War we are now arguing about the appropriateness of public displays of the confederate flag, confirming Lewis’ statement that this struggle has been going on for a long time.

The Civil War did far more to produce a southern nationalism which flourished in the cult of the Lost Cause then southern nationalism did to produce the war. (page 469)

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even a Pulitzer Prize can date a little. Great book though probably not as "modern" as academic concerns currently are preoccupied with. Nonetheless, it threads the needle between the Mexican War that clearly escalated the slavery crisis through the Compromise of 1850 to the Kansas Nebraska Act to the declarations of succession. It's eminently readable for such a potentially dense subject and is probably still the book on this era. If you want to read up on the causes of the Civil War, few books do it better.

[Jeremy Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Potter died before this book was published so all the success and praise, including a Pulitzer Prize, could only be received posthumously. It is however a magnificent work that captures the over a decade period that was leading up to the Civil War. The book is part of the New American History series not the Oxford History series that I had been reading. Unlike the Oxford History volumes, it does not dive as deep into the average people as well as the elites with the same amount of elegant detail, nevertheless it is a great book. A small note to any readers that when they read this book they may to want to be aware beforehand: it was written before the term 'African-American' became widely accepted and instead uses the anachronistic word 'Negro'. It actually took me a minute to catch on because when reading about the past one comes about the word Negro quite a bit, normally I just view the term in its historic lens, but as I read further the term was used quite generally referring to 'the Negro population' and to Fredrick Douglass as a 'leading Negro thinker' even when not talking from a historical perspective.

This book covers the political battles of the many participants who were in the political arena in the late 1850s; the work also covers the political theories of the state of American Nationalism, and the formation of Southern Nationalism. Potter also discusses how the impact of books and literature that were written in the 1850s impacted the time period. One example of a powerful and hard-hitting book was the original The Impending Crisis that dealt with the problem of slavery from a southern prospective of non-slaveholding whites. A more famous example of strong literature is the immortal Uncle Tom's Cabin.

"In almost every respect, Uncle Tom's Cabin lacked the standard qualifications for such great literary success. It may plausibly be argued that Mrs. Stowe's characters were impossible and her Negroes were blackface stereotypes, that her plot was sentimental, her dialect absurd, her literary technique crude, and her overall picture of the conditions of slavery distorted. But without any of the vituperation in which the abolitionists were so fluent, and with a sincere though unappreciated effort to avoid blaming the South, she made vivid the plight of the slave as a human being held in bondage. It was perhaps because of the steadiness with which she held this focus that Lord Palmerston, a man noted for his cynicism, admired the book not only for 'its story but for the statesmanship of it.' History cannot evaluate with precision the influence of a novel upon public opinion, but the northern attitude toward slavery was never quite the same after Uncle Tom's Cabin. Men who had remained unmoved by real fugitives wept for Tom under the lash and cheered for Eliza with the bloodhounds on her track."p.140

One of the things Potter discusses in the book that I was very pleased to here is the tendency for most people to look back at the past with the feeling of inevitability. This attitude does everyone a disservice because it creates a misinterpretation of the past and the people who were living in it. Although, his own title of this book helps with that narrative that he was trying to combat.

"Seen this way the decade of the fifties becomes a kind of vortex, whirling the country in ever narrower circles and more rapid revolutions into the pit of war. Because of the need for a theme and focus in any history, this is probably inevitable. But for the sake of realism, it should be remembered that most human beings during these years went about their daily lives, preoccupied with their personal affairs, with no sense of impending disaster nor any fixation on the issue of slavery."p.145

Potter also discusses the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and while doing so he tries to cut though the legend and misinterpretations that often are made about this event. He tries to make it plain what the two opponents believed and what they were fighting for.

"The difference between Douglas and Lincoln--and in a large sense between proslavery and antislavery thought--was not that Douglas believed in chattel servitude (for he did not), or that Lincoln believed in an unqualified, full equality of blacks and whites (for he did not). The difference was that Douglas did not believe that slavery really mattered very much, because he did not believe that Negroes had enough human affinity with him to make it necessary for him to concern himself with them. Lincoln, on the contrary, believed that slavery mattered, because he recognized the human affinity with blacks which made their plight a necessary."p354

He explains the raid of Harper's Ferry and the antislavery crusader John Brown in his rather insane attempt to cause a slave rebellion. In Potter's narrative what Brown lacks as an armed rebel he excels as a martyr. The North morns his death, which infuriates the South and makes them feel more isolated. Thus after the election of Lincoln they begin their attempts to break the South away from the Union.

Everything discussed in this review and more is covered in this incredible book. I would recommend it to people who already have a strong knowledge of the history of this country who would like to increase their understanding of this difficult time period.

[Aaron Million · Rating 3 out of 5]

The years preceding the Civil War are both disturbing and fascinating to read about. How did it come to Americans killing other Americans, based on geographical lines (which back then corresponded to states where slavery was allowed versus states where it was not allowed)? Even over one hundred sixty years later, it is still incredible to think about. But, as Potter shows here, after awhile it became more or less inevitable that a supreme conflict would erupt between North and South.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize, and after reading it I can understand why. The footnotes alone are worth the time to read, as not only do they provide source after source to back up what Potter pus in the text, but he adds much more commentary about the sources themselves: which ones have certain viewpoints both for and against whatever issue or person that is under discussion. The amount of research that Potter put into this is enormous. Indeed, he died before he could finish it, thus the book was completed by Don Fehrenbacher. I really appreciated the source notes in case I want to do any further reading on a specific person. The downside is that they are now dated given that Potter died in 1971. So many of the references are from books that are now a century old, some more and some less. That doesn't mean that they aren't good, but some have surely been superseded by more modern works.

Potter covers a wide range of issues as is befitting for a massive subject such as this. Elections (1848, 1852, 1856, and 1860) are all reviewed in great detail. Potter is especially good at explaining the collapse of the Whig Party, the fracturing of the Democratic Party, and the rise of the Republican Party from the embers of the Whigs. Throw in the Know-Nothing Party, the Constitutional Union Party, and a few others, and it can get complicated to keep track of just what each party stood for. The Whigs and the Democrats were the only two that were fully national in character, although both were divided along sectional (read: geographical) lines. Sometimes there would be overlap between the sections of the same party, but other times Southern Whigs might join with Southern Democrats, and likewise for the North. Battle lines were constantly being drawn and re-drawn, depending on the issue.

The Compromise of 1850 is discussed in detail, along with the machinations of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, three towering political figures of the first half of the 19th century. The Compromise allowed for California to come into the Union as a free state while setting up territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah, and abolishing the slave trade in Washington D.C. This took quite awhile to accomplish because both the North and the South had to give in on certain points in order to move forward. In discussing this, Potter lavishes praise on Millard Fillmore, who had just assumed the presidency following the death of Zachary Taylor. Potter was critical of Taylor, a Southerner, taking a hardline attitude toward Southerners who wished to expand slavery. Taylor was - in this instance - somewhat of the same mold as Andrew Jackson: Union first, slavery later. But Fillmore, a Northern "doughface" (Southern sympathizer) tilted towards the South, helping to usher the Compromise through. On page 110, Potter writes: "Thus, Fillmore settled a very inflamed crisis - in some ways more explosive than the one on which Clay had been working - and settled it with such adroitness and seeming ease that history has scarcely recognized the magnitude of his achievement." In my view, all Fillmore did was kick the can down the road a few years. Then again, maybe he inadvertently helped the North as it gave them more time to build an industrial base.

The hot-button issue of "Bleeding Kansas" is covered extensively. Was it to be a slave state or a free state? This took up a lot of the book, but this controversy took up much of the 1850s. People died over it, on both sides of the issue. Both sides covered themselves in ignominy in trying to create a majority in that territory. It also was the vehicle that destroyed the bright career of Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois. His attempt to push popular sovereignty (the people in a given territory decide the slavery question for themselves) in the end pleased no one, and backfired dramatically on him, essentially ruining his chances of becoming President (he was one of three men who lost to Abraham Lincoln in 1860) while physically exhausting him. Kansas also helped torpedo the administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan because both men badly mismanaged the situation. What is ironic is that ultimately Kansas was voted in as a free state on the eve of the Civil War, but by then nobody really cared anymore because the Union was breaking apart with many Southern states seceding.

Even though I found Potter's praising of Fillmore to be exaggerated, he rightly categorizes both Pierce and Buchanan as feckless and ineffective leaders. Both were vacillators, eager to please most people whom they encountered, and were heavily influenced by Southerners, both personally and in their respective Cabinets. Pierce comes across as a bumbler who hated to make anyone mad. Jefferson Davis held a lot of sway with him, further pushing Pierce into attempting to accommodate the South whenever possible. Buchanan, while much more experienced and qualified for the office than was Pierce, made a mess of the horrible situation that Pierce left him with in Kansas, and also misled the country in his Inaugural Address by saying that the country should support and obey whatever decision the Supreme Court made in the Dred Scott case. One big problem with that: Buchanan already knew what the decision would be (in a nutshell: that blacks were not citizens, and that Scott therefore had to remain a slave because slaves could not sue for freedom because they were not considered citizens). Later, as the country hurtled toward Civil War in late 1860 and early 1861, Buchanan was left with no good options, and no real authority. He thought that secession was illegal, but also that it was illegal for the federal government to try to bring the seceded states back into the Union. Ultimately, Buchanan mostly dithered and waited for Lincoln to take office. Potter is good here, explaining that while Buchanan's poor reputation is largely deserved, at the same time he faced no good options, and that there was at that point little that he could do to stop the coming of war.

Even though I thought that at times Potter seemed to blame the North more for causing the war, some of his analysis really seemed spot-on to me. On pages 390-391 he wrote: "Northern members were primarily concerned with enacting a new economic program appropriate to an emerging industrial society, while southern members were preoccupied with vindicating the slave system symbolically by forcing their territorial doctrine on the northern wing of their party - though they might destroy the party in the process. In short, North and South were simply moving in opposite directions, and the South was almost obsessively defining its position in terms that isolated it from the North and identified it with policies that, because of the tendencies of the modern world, were foreordained to defeat." In essence, it was becoming more and more obvious that the two sides could not continue to coexist side-by-side. Something would have to give.

Potter handles Lincoln fairly well, neither fawning over him nor making him out to be someone who dared the South to fight (although he discounts the possibility that the assassination plot in Baltimore in February 1860 was real). His chapter on the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates though was not particularly good. It focused on the technical aspects of each man's arguments and speeches, and conveyed none of the drama or emotion that came with the debates. In contrast, his chapter on John Brown and the attack at Harpers Ferry is quite good and balanced. He shows Brown to be both committed to his cause and a lunatic at the same time. I also liked the final chapters on the long interregnum period between Lincoln's election and inauguration, while the Southern states began to secede. Potter spends a lot of time going through each of the Deep South states that did so, and shows that in some states the decision was far from clear or overwhelming. A few states only narrowly voted to secede. South Carolina, as it had been in 1832 and earlier in the 1850s, led the secession movement and got out in front of everyone. Only this time, other states followed. Potter astutely observes that the hardcore secessionists took advantage of fear stirred up by Lincoln's election (the Southerners themselves manufactured much of this fear) to speedily whip through secession conventions and votes, whereas if some more time had been allowed to lapse, they might very well have lost their initiative if the people were allowed to see that Lincoln did not intend to invade the South.

But would this have mattered in the end? I'm not so sure. How much longer could the country have continued on, half free and half slave? None of the last-ditch compromise plans (such as the Crittenden Compromise) came to fruition. As Potter argues, the fire-eaters in the South by this time wanted to secede. They just needed a pretext for doing so, and Lincoln's election gave them that pretext. In that sense, even though many in the North still doubted that the Southern states would actually secede, it became more or less inevitable that they would. It seems crazy to think that this still happened, even at this great distance. Yet, look at how the world is now: also crazy.

Newer and fresher studies are no doubt available, and probably more valuable to read. However, that does not mean that Potter's work should be discarded. This is a serious piece of scholarship, an while I did not always agree with his conclusions or analysis, there is no question that he earned the accolades that this book received. Were I reading this book shortly after it came out, no doubt I would rate it higher. As it is, I still found it worthwhile to invest my time in.

Grade: C+

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Professor Potter presents a detailed account of the events that lead to the political polarization of the US in the mid-19th century that eventually resulted in the American Civil War. I read this book in hopes that I would find vast differences between the disagreements of our antebellum predecessors and those that we are obsessed with in the early 21st century. I was disappointed to find mostly glaring similarities. Professor Potter died nearly 50 years ago, so he was certainly not writing to point out these similarities.

In some respects, it appears we may be in even worse shape than in the 1850s. During that decade, there were several politicians with large followings who were continually trying to find compromise solutions to relieve the partisan disagreements that dominated the political agenda. One can question the viability of these proposed compromises and the motivations of their supporters, but at least someone recognized the unsustainability of the situation and was trying to do something about it. Today finding support for something as simple as repairing roads and bridges takes all the good will that the parties can muster and vilification awaits persons such as Liz Cheney or Joe Manchin, who fall out of lockstep with the rest of their party.

Potter explores the antebellum Southern psyche and finds that fear of slave insurrection as the dominant emotion of the white population. Because of this fear, even non-slaveholding whites opposed the end of slavery and the prospect of millions of former slaves, many of whom might be seeking violent retribution for centuries of involuntary servitude, living among them. Therefore, the author emphasizes John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry as the event that made secession conceivable for many Southerners. The feckless Brown, whose poorly planned and amateurish attempt never had a chance of success, was hung for his efforts, but to the horror of the South, was hailed as a hero and martyr for trying to incite and facilitate rebellion among the slave population. Attitudes were hardened on both sides and civil war became not nearly as unthinkable.

My hope is that an equally slipshod attempt at rebellion that took place last January will not have similar results.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would love to give Potter’s book more than 3 stars, but this was a book that I struggled to read despite enjoying it. Unlike most books, it took me months to read this one, I kept finding reasons to put off reading it.
One of the reasons was simply the appearance of the book. You know how you sometimes pick up a 250 page book and thinks, “Wow, the publisher did everything they could to stretch this book to 250 pages?” The margins are large, the font is big, the spacing is wide, etc. The author delivered 120 pages of text, but the publisher wanted a bigger book? This book was the exact opposite. It was just under 600 pages, but the font is small, the spacing is neglible, and the margins are non-existent. It is almost as if the author produced a 900 page book, but the publisher didn’t think a 900 page book could sell, so did everything to squeeze it into 600 pages. This gave the book a cramped feel.

As for the book itself, I had a love/hate relationship with it. For the most part I loved it, but there were sections that dragged and were too compact—more of a list of facts than a narrative.

But the parts that excelled, were great.

But what makes reading a 43 year old history interesting is that it is a reflection upon the culture that wrote the book. This book was the best book on antebellum history as it was understood in 1976. Ideas that are accepted today, were novel or unheard of 43 years ago. Ideas that were accepted 43 years ago, have been rejected in the meantime. Issues that were focused on have changed.

But what makes reading a 43 year old history interesting is that sometimes you realize that the issues that are pervasive today, were pervasive then, and 170 years ago. History may not repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes. Reading old history about history makes this fact come to life.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Impending Crisis by David M. Potter

On the Dred Scott decision, The New York Independent wrote that the decision of the Supreme Court is the moral assassination of a race and cannot be obeyed. The New York Tribune said that no man who really desired the triumph of freedom over slavery in the territories would submit to the decision of a bench with five slaveholders and two dough faces on it.

I took quite a few notes on this lengthy American history on the period between the end of the Mexican-American War and the beginning of the Civil War. The level of research is quite extensive and the writing is good though not always colorful.

The author David M. Potter died in 1971. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1977 for this book which Don Fehrenbacher helped complete and publish in 1976. Fehrenbacher himself won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics.

Here are my notes.

1. Fort Bridger was located on the border of Utah and Wyoming and was a key stopping point on the Oregon, California and Mormon Trails. It was technically built on Mexican land but it was said that mountain man Jim Bridger had secured a small land grant from Mexico. This fort was relevant because of the explosion of Polk's Manifest Destiny and the migration along these trails.

2. In 1850 there was a major crisis when South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia tried to secede in Congress but ran into some procedural roadblocks and cooler heads prevailed.

3. Bleeding Kansas in 1855, with only 1,600 registered voters was so deeply divided that abolitionist forces set up their own parallel government in Topeka. The official territorial capital and its pro-slavery governor were located in Lecompton. The capital was later moved to Lawrence and then eventually to Topeka in 1981 when Kansas was admitted to the union.

4. May 21, 1856 was the sack of Lawrence Kansas, the home of abolitionists. The next day Congressman Brooks from South Carolina mercilessly caned Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers because of a highly personal oratory Sumner launched against slavery and impugned another Senator. Less than 24 hours later, an enraged John Brown killed four largely defenseless civilians in the Potawatomi Massacre.

5. Between 1845 and 1854 there were 2.9 million immigrants to America. This was the largest influx of immigrants, percentage wise at 15%, in the history of United States. Many of these immigrants were from Ireland.

6. It took seven years for the fugitive Dred Scott case to wind its way through the courts. A deeply racist Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled against Scott. Scott was eventually manumitted by his owners and died a freed man.

7. In the years following the Mexican American War, an America drunk with power, involved itself with invasions of Nicaragua, tried to first purchase Cuba from Spain, then meddled with it and then saw incursions by filibusterers like Wallace in Sonora Mexico, and even purchased the Gadsden strip for a planned railroad to the West Coast. Manifest Destiny knew no bounds.

8. The 1858 Illinois Senate campaign and election was the most famous local election in American history. Lincoln versus Douglass. In July and August the two men vigorously debated one another in town after town.

9. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. In his third raid on Kansas in the summer prior to Harper's Ferry, Brown was able to free eleven slaves and took them all the way east to security in Ontario. Following his capture at Harper's Ferry, Brown was admired by many southerners for his brashness and bravery. It was not enough to prevent him from being hanged and polarized the nation even more because the south feared more John Browns and how easily they might inspire slave revolts.

10. In the famous 1860 political race for President that brought Abraham Lincoln to the White House, a new party called the Constitutional Union Party was formed. The party secured support from dozens of legislators and old war heroes from both the North and South. They were considered a moderate leaning party with some sympathies to slave holding states. They nominated John Bell for President who was a cold and uninspiring personality but was not in ill health like most of the other party favorites like Winfield Scott. They positioned themselves as a moderate choice compared to the Republican and abolitionist William Seward. What they did not count on was the rise of Lincoln and his nomination in Chicago.

11. John Breckenridge of the Southern Democratic Party and Stephen Douglas of the Democratic Party comprised the other major Presidential candidates. They essentially split much of the vote with Douglas winning only one state despite his support of nearly 30% of the popular vote. So Lincoln won the electoral count and a plurality of the popular vote with 39%. Douglas already in ill health would die of typhoid in the summer of 1861 months after the election. He was just forty-eight years old.

12. For the first time in fifty years ago a party that publicly opposed slavery now held the White House. It didn't long for several Southern states including South Carolina to drum up the militants to draw up plans to secede from the Union.

13. After the election of 1860, outgoing President Buchanan was worried about a Civil War starting on his watch. He wanted to reinforce Charleston with Federal troops but received no support from his cabinet and in fact several of his cabinet members were already maneuvering for positions in the planned Confederacy. The author claims that while Buchanan was a weak president he did take the threat seriously.

14. The final chapter covers Fort Sumter and Lincoln's arrival to Washington. There was a credible threat to Lincoln being assassinated as his train came through Baltimore. Maryland was still a slave state. So much subterfuge was applied to secret Lincoln safely into D.C. At his inaugural address Lincoln stood firm on the unity of the nation . I am loth to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds for affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

15. At Charleston, Confederate general Beauregard had orders to not let the relief ship to Fort Sumter but Jefferson Davis wanted to act preemptively. On April 12th at 4:30 am the first Confederate shell hit Fort Sumter and thirty three hours later the Fort was surrendered.

4.5 stars. While this history is not the colorful narrative non-fiction that I tend to eat up, one would be hard pressed to find a more informative book on any twelve year stretch of American history.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, rich history of the lead-up to the Civil War. Potter begins with the debate over the Wilmot Proviso and ends with the first shots at Fort Sumter, and clearly presents all of the economic, social and political aspects of the sectional conflict in between (with the most emphasis on the latter) All of Potter’s arguments are solidly backed up.

Interestingly, Potter deals with the era as people saw it as the time, meaning he often covers issues that other historians skip over just because they don’t directly relate to the sectional crisis. He also portrays John Brown’s raid as a publicity stunt and his treatment of James Buchanan and Stephen Douglas is rather sympathetic. Potter also emphasizes how the South scored many tactical victories in the sectional conflict that later turned out to be strategic defeats.

An evenhanded, consistent history, although social and economic history seems to take a relative backseat at times, and his downplaying of the Dred Scott case is not entirely convincing.

[Books, Brews, and Tunes · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute masterpiece, an epic and tragedy, and an incredible feat of historical writing. To me, this is an incredibly complicated and dense time with so many moving pieces and historical figures to keep track of.

Potter's obituary accurately sums up what it is like to read Potter's work: "To read Potter is to become aware of a truth: That the chief lesson to be derived from a study of the past is that it holds no simple lesson, and that the historian's main responsibility is to prevent anyone from claiming that it does."

Potter writes the book with no bias and allows the reader to make the decision over who is to blame for the disunion. No single President is blamed for the disunion of the United States nor is any single piece of legislation. Yet, Potter makes it abundantly clear what is to blame for disunion -- slavery, the act to forcibly hold a person in bondage -- not "taxes," not "states rights," as many might try to make you believe.

However, the disunion did not happen suddenly; instead, the "cords" that held the Union together in 1847 slowly ruptured in the next 14 years as the South refused to remove slavery and the North refused to "compromise" with the South. The final cord, which held together just the upper south, snapped in April of 1861 with the Confederacy's decision to open arms against the American flag and military at Fort Sumter.

[Dylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good writing, terrible coverage, doesn't live up to the title.

300 pages in and the totally myopic focus on Congressional political wrangling has just made this impossible to finish for me. Well written but with little discussion of culture and zero discussion of economics or everyday life. Despite the title, this is nothing close to a comprehensive account of the era. Read only as a supplement to other works.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tome pulls back the curtain on the years leading up to the Civil War, including both political and policy events. While other books only briefly touch on these topics, this volume delves into them in great detail. I found the book to be well balanced and very informative. Although I had already known most of the subject matter, it was presented here in a very brisk and highly readable narrative form. Overall a very good read and well worth the time spent on it.

[Nancy Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book. It took me a long time to read because each page contains a wealth of information, and it's not something you can just breeze through if you're truly interested in the subject. I've been reading about the Civil War for almost 60 years now but have always been neglectful of material dealing with the 1850s. This volume cured that! There are several rather dry chapters on the political compromises dealing with the creation of new territories and addition of new states to the Union, the politicians attempting to avoid dealing with the issue of slavery. I found the later chapters on the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the John Brown fiasco at Harper's Ferry to be especially fascinating, making up for slogging through the political debates! At the end, I truly felt as if I had come to a much better understanding of how it all erupted into a civil war. Perhaps the greatest lesson we could all learn is to never judge the past based on the present. Just as that old proverb says: Never judge a person until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Unfortunately, we cannot travel back in time to share their experiences, so perhaps it's best that we keep our judgmental mouths shut and try to learn from history instead of repeating it.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just an excellent and highly readable account of the period leading up to the Civil War. It is a political history of the country during that period; it doesn't cover social, cultural or economic developments except as they bear upon the subject matter.

In the last few years, a number of Southerners have asserted that the Civil War was not really fought over the issue of slavery, but rather over states' rights issues, tariffs, etc. This book, written in 1976 and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize back then, makes an overwhelmingly compelling case that this is wrong, that slavery was not only the most important issue leading to the war, but in fact the only issue.

[Hana]

Reading Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner has reminded me of all the gaps in my knowledge of this critical period in U.S. history. This looks like a splendid overview of key events in the years just before the war.

[Elliott Petty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a leisure read. Long and very detailed, but usually very insightful regarding the events from 1848 to Fort Sumter (1861).

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely well-written book about the 1850's and the issues that led up to the Civil War. The secession of the South was about far more than the issue of slavery. In fact, even the issue of slavery was about more than slavery.

Potter lays out the major happenings of the 1850's and how each one led to the distrust of the Union by the Southern States. For example, when the United States won the Mexican American War in 1848, we took over a lot of territory held originally by Mexico (California, New Mexico, Arizona). In the aftermath there was much argument about whether the territories would permit slavery or not. The politicians of the Southern States argued that this was a states' right issue and that the people of the territories should decide. The politicians and leaders in the Northern States wanted Congress to pass laws prohibiting slavery in the territories but allowing the people to vote on whether they wanted to be a free or slave state when they submitted for statehood.

This was, of course, a thinly veiled attempt to outlaw slavery in the new states. By prohibiting slavery in the territories there would be no slavery supporters to vote for slavery when applying for statehood. While this seems to be about slavery, slavery actually plays a nominal role in this argument. For one thing, according to Potter, very few slave owners were going to move to the new territories because they were not conducive to using slaves to farm the crops. For another, the argument was really about how much power the central government would have. Remember that at this time in our history, states had much more power than they do now, and the politicians in those states did not want to relinquish it.

Potter uses the other historical high points of the 1850's to show how this battle over states rights, the breakup of the Whig party, the internal fracturing of the Democratic Party, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, etc. each contributed another drop to the cauldron of disunion until it overflowed in Civil War.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is scholarly history at its best. Its Pulitzer is well-deserved. Potter's analysis of one of the most critical (and confusing) periods of American history is as comprehensive as could be wished. The writing is cogent and stimulating. I've read quite a few books about the Civil War, but never really understood exactly how the conflict came to pass. I found readng this book infinitely clarifying. Potter seems a faultless and highly objective guide to a complex era. All points of view are explored, some with more sympathy than others, but his treatment of everything seems eminently fair. I bought this book to fill a gap in my collection of volumes from The Oxford History of the United States. While this volume is not part of that series, it fulfills my purpose admirably. The thing that struck me most while reading this one was the disturbing number of parallels between the antebellum era and our own troubled times. The issues now are somewhat different, but the similarities seem obvious, chillingly so. Overall: If you have the slightest interest in the story of our nation, and have a tolerance for a more erudite form of the historical genre, I can't recommend this one too highly. I'll go further: Every American should try to read this book and to compare it with what they know of our present political climate. There are important lessons to be learned from such a comparison. Kudos to Potter and to his colleague and editor Fehrenbacher for a truly stellar work of history.

[Jonathan Blanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and clearly written. Its sometimes contrarian assertions are well supported, but it nevertheless suffers when it tries to be too objective regarding the white Southern perspective. It would be too much to say this book apologizes for the South, but in (otherwise appropriately) correcting the dominant narrative about the beneficence of the North, the narrative misses the day to day life in the South that informed the ‘Great Man’ politics in which this book relies.

Written more than 40 years ago, it is not conservative in the way that today’s whitewashing of the antebellum South tends to operate, but at the same time a reader of histories written in the decades since will notice the conspicuous dearth of voices of those whose bondage was at the core of the coming conflict.

All that said, it’s a remarkable work and I learned a great deal from it.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This historic account of the state of the Union in the years prior to the Civil War focuses primarily on the slavery question--how matters were compromised and how the compromises broke down. It was written in the 1960s, so some of the theses younger historians have developed are not represented. It is an interesting book in that Lincoln plays so little a part in the story (as is correct), but also because Potter doesn't appear to be a big fan of Lincoln generally (he seems to dismiss Lincoln's role in the 1858 senatorial debates as not that important. Well worth reading, but not the entire story of the period.

[jacobi]

kinda wild to write a book this long about the tension between the north and south in the years leading up to the civil war and to only ever mention slavery as a kind of economic/ethical rubix cube to be solved never touching on the conditions of the enslaved

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

The North and the South forgot how to talk to one another. Deep dive into antebellum politics.

[Jeff Jamba · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised to finish this book, hop onto the reviews, and see so many four and five stars.

The pluses of the book for me are the absolute thoroughness of the moments and nuances leading up to the start of the civil war. It is a very fair and balanced treatment of the people and policies (overall) as well.

The negatives is that it reads pretty much like a textbook. There are moments with some more engaging readability, but the vast majority of the content reads far too often like a series of school essays posing all sides of an issue and finally taking a stance.

Everyone has their own style and preference, and for me I am looking for more than a recounting of the factors surrounding a given time or person or place (which felt to me like the goal of this book). The Impending Crisis was pretty much devoid of any attempt to see they story being told. There was no attempt to help the reader become personally engaged or immersed in the times, to see myself there. Many other books on history have done quite well in being factual while storytelling.

So, just know what you want before picking this one up. You will come out with a very comprehensive overview of this period of American history; but don’t expect to be drawn into this one. I hate feeling like I had to work to finish it, but that’s exactly how it went for me at least.

[Jeremy Silverman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding history of the 13 years leading to the American Civil War. The focus is heavily on the political maneuvering on the part of congress and presidents, but social-cultural factors are attended to as well. I found it both brilliant and riveting. There are too many ways in which the polarization of the country in the 1850s have distressing parallels today, but these only add to the strong interest of this book.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was looking for a good overview of the period between James K. Polk's presidency and the beginning of the Civil War, and this was it. Written in the early 70s by David Potter and published by his estate in 1976, it provides a solid history of the fight over slavery in the new territories, Dred Scott, the transformations of the Democratic and Republican parties, and Southern efforts that began it's move toward secession. In fact, one of the most revealing aspects of the book was the inclusion of excerpts from the Congressional Globe, which was the predecessor to the current Congressional Record. In it, the words of Southern congressmen clearly articulate their pro-slavery views and their use of slavery as the primary cause of eventual Southern secession.

[Michael A · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an extremely political take on the events leading up to the first shots of the Civil War starting with President Polk's all too successful imperialist grab for Mexican land in 1846-1847. It's so political in its focus that it mentions slaves as actual people barely at all and, rather, focuses on political events related to slavery in the abstract almost every time it can (everything surrounding the admission of Kansas as a territory, Dred Scott, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and so on).

This makes the reading come off a bit "bloodless" or some such adjective. I felt it was so dry, abstract, and so narrow that it leaves a lot of gaping holes in other significant areas -- cultural history, economic trends at the time, military history, and gender/social history for a start.

Consequently, I would not recommend this as your first reading on the historical time period here. However, I do think it does a great job of filling in lots of little gaps present in the larger Oxford surveys that I have been reading recently about the political situation of the time. You get a much better sense of why the Mexican War led to the Civil War and the events marking the breakdown of the great parties of the Second Party Era that held the nation together uncomfortably over about 30 years.

My final verdict -- a great resource for those of us interested in political antebellum history but definitely a bit too dense and dry at times. Read it slowly and take notes along the way for best retention. Its approach probably works best in combination with a number of other books that approach this time period from different historical foci.

Now I have only two left on the list: "Battle Cry of Freedom" and Eric Foner's "Reconstruction" -- after those two I will start finding books dealing with much narrower historical topics and events before moving on to the "Modern American" phase of the project (1870s - today).

[Nick Gaschler · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first began to dig into scholarship on the Civil War period, I was rather surprised that there was a lack of broad overviews and examinations of the Sectional crisis leading up to 1861. There are some scholarly works on Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott Decision and other more consequential moments of the 1850, but nothing notable. Then I discovered and read David Potter’s The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War and I quickly realized that this is the definitive volume on this period. It’s a little dated, published in the 1970s, but this to my understanding now working through more Civil War history is the crucible for the modern understanding and interpretation of the Sectional Crisis before the Civil War. It’s a Pulitzer-Prize winning work that sheds light on so much of the political chaos of the period. It illustrates the prospects and motivations of both North and South in an objective fashion. And it is packed full with information - my copy is bulging with sticky notes. With that being said, this is at times an analytically dense book. It also takes a strictly political approach to things often ignoring the social or cultural impact of the events at hand. This renders rich events like Bleeding Kansas as a rather dull analytical point instead of the emotionally charged event that it was or slavery as a mere ideology rather than a gruesome institution experienced by millions every day. In this sense, the book may be slightly dated (it also took some getting used to some of the language used here that would be frowned upon by modern academia). I loved this and feel it should be required reading or at least incorporated into curriculum on the Civil War. It’s as insightful as it is informative and though it was written now a half century ago, it stands as a definitive volume.

Potter takes the reader through the 12 year period from the end of the Mexican-American War up to the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Throughout the journey, you get a portrait of every central event that takes place. The first two chapters are considerations and analysis on two core themes to the book - nationalism and sectionalism. I feel that both of these phenomena are essential to understanding the period and are closely intertwined with one another and thus Potter sets the book off wonderfully with these considerations. The sectional crisis was unique because it was the first time North and South were pitted against one another in a political fashion. Because of the large westward expansion of the country, the slave question was a scab broken open. In 1820, it had been settled with the Missouri Compromise at a time when the South felt less threatened by Northern development and abolitionist condemnation of slavery. In 1850 when the controversy was reignited, the South now saw a republic dominated both economically and proportionately by the North. They also saw a much greater movement for abolition which enflamed the staunch defenders of the peculiar institution. This was the basis of the sectional crisis as Potter understands it and I think he hits it right on the head. In tandem with this, Potter identifies the competing nationalistic views Americans had for their country. Where the North saw a nation predicated on free wage labor and industrial expansion, the South sought to expand their conservative, state-dominant political and social structure, characterized by an agrarian economic model ran on slavery. One of the central themes, in my opinion, of the Civil War is the transformation of the Union into a Nation. This debate can be seen within The Impending Crisis.

Potter moves forward throughout the rest of the book, touching on three central themes. First, is the attempts to solve the question of slavery in territories - the main tension at the heart of the sectional crisis - through Congressional control, popular sovereignty, and Constitutional reverence. The idea of Congressional control over slavery originated within the Wilmont Proviso, the issue that sparked the sectional conflict. It was continually championed by anti-slavery Northerners. The antithesis of such a viewpoint was the Southern view that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to usurp an individuals right to property in new territory, manifested most directly in the Dred Scott decision. Then there was the middle path, that of popular sovereignty - advocated by Stephen Douglas. This was the guiding principle in the Kansas-Nebraska Act and frequently the principle that prevailed for better or worse. The sectional crisis was fought politically over the expansion of slavery in the territories. It was not about culture or economics, it originated in respect to the territorial question and it was waged in respect of the territorial questions. Thus, it is reasonable to establish, as Potter does, that these competing viewpoints were the fuel that drove the sectional controversy.

Potter’s second central theme is that of party balance. Potter continually reiterates the unity of the Democratic Party in 1846 and even later in 1852 and ’56 respectively. James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan were all elected broadly with bisectional support from the Democratic Party. But as the sectional crisis intensified and items like the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Lecompton constitution were made into issues by the South. These attempts to defend the South’s honor and position in the American Union wholly alienated Northern Democrats from Southern Democrats, destroying political unity within the party. Why is this important? This collapse within the Democratic Party occurred as the Whig party collapsed and other single-issue parties like the Know-Nothing’s struggled for control. What resulted was the collapse of political faction organized on the principle of government. What came about instead was political faction based on geographic interest which fell along Northern and Southern lines with catastrophic consequences for the Union. Perhaps no other example best suits this point than Stephen Douglas who Potter devotes a lot of time to in this tome. He was part of the effort to get the Compromise of 1850 passed. Then in 1854, Douglas crossed sectional lines and allied with Southern Democrats to repeal the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling the Kansas-Nebraska Act to pass with the understanding that the popular sovereignty principle would prevail. But by 1858 and 1860, Douglas stood in vehement opposition to Southern Democrats symbolizing the polarization that had occurred within the Democratic Party.

The third central theme here is the loss of prestige held by the South. The Union had been founded in 1787 with a South relatively proportionate, if not stronger than the Northern states. The Northern states were also relatively more tolerant to slavery than they became. Slavery was increasingly entrenched into a conservative, hierarchical society in the South, predicated on doctrines of inferiority and honor. The rise of ‘King Cotton’ no doubt had a role to play here as it further solidified the agrarian basis of the Southern economy. However, as the North continued to expand Westward, improve its industrial capacity and grow in population, it began to outnumber and outproduce the South. Attitudes towards slavery in the North began to change. Anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment became widespread, which in turn led to definitive, public condemnation of slavery (though critically this was NOT a doctrine of racial equality, simply opposition to human bondage.) Thus the North’s relative superiority to the South by the mid 19th century when paired with condemnation of the institution of slavery so vital to Southern social and economic well-being resulted in fear that the South’s voice in the Union would be silenced and the institution of slavery would be annihilated. In response, the South waged political battles in Congress which neither strengthened their relative position in the Union, the institution of slavery or their own public opinion. The central political events that occurred in the 1850s were the result of this hard-fought Southern effort. However, the high cost the South had to pay had little actual benefit to their position and security.

These themes encompass not only the era of the Sectional Crisis, but the events that characterize it. Be it the Compromise of 1850, the Bleeding Kansas debacle or the Dred Scott Decision, the events that had a profound impact on the state of the Union were predicated on the competing stances of the status of slavery in the west, fought hard over by the South who felt continually alienated and resentful that the North had grown past them, and resulted in the breakdown of a bisectional political union that stabilized the United States. Potter’s understanding of the Sectional Crisis is a much more nuanced view on the Sectional Crisis. Whereas the common view and certainly the way I was taught follows the Sectional Crisis as almost a ‘cold Civil War’ where geographic divisions were formed over slavery, Potter’s acknowledges the validity of that, while going further to understand the contours of the period, emphasizing that secession and Civil War was not the inevitable conclusion contemporary Americans marched towards.

[Matt Silverman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ironically, I finished this book on the day that Marjorie Taylor Greene declared her wish for a "national divorce."

Regarding the book itself, I thought Potter's narrative about the antebellum period was a detailed and well-written account of a fascinating time in our history. Since it was written in the '70s, the style is a bit slow, and he probably could have cut about 100 pages, but it was still worth reading for someone who is relatively new to the subject.

There were a few takeaways that stood out:

I. Negative polarization: The southern Democrats in this period became so diametrically opposed to anything they saw as benefiting the North that they ended up opposing policies that would have helped make them more dynamic and competitive with the North. The parallels to our current moment here were hard to ignore.

II. Slavery defined the sections, and the sections defined everything else: One reason for hope that MTG won't get her American death wish is that there's no issue in current American politics that falls along a purely sectional divide. Potter convincingly makes the case that the Civil War wasn't cast in stone until the sectional divide started to color every issue (railroads, improvements, the tariff)—even on issues that had nothing to do with slavery.

III. Political parties actually held the Union together (kind of): The breakdown of the cross-sectional nature of the Democratic and Whig parties was a huge ingredient in the conflict. Especially among the Democrats, losing their national status incentivized their representatives to take pro-slavery positions that appealed to a base which was increasingly disconnected from their northern counterparts.

[Rob Melich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this amazing book minutes after the announcement of the completion of the Mueller report. The timing was appropriate. (Is this 2019 investigation the Dred Scott decision of our times? Maybe?)
I read a lot of history covering all generations and types. This is the best American history book I've read to date. It is a challenging read because it covers all elements of antebellum America: economic, cultural, political, legal and constitutional, and biographical. The depth of analysis and the extensive use of data to support claims made throughout make it unique, and at times slow reading (but well worth it).
Anyone who has interest in the causes of the Civil War and want context around sectionalism, slavery, Dred Scott, slave rebellions (John Brown), the presidency, tariffs, and so much more will come away well informed.
The lesson I learned is that the roots of the 2019 American divisions go back to our founding and the founders (mostly slave holders) inability to resolve the paradox of universal suffrage while maintaining an economic system derived from slave and indentured (low cost) labor.
This book should be the only text needed for both a high school and college American history, political science, and economics course. It would be the only book needed to teach these topics well.