1861: The Lost Peace

America dragged itself kicking and screaming into the Civil War, according to this stimulating history. Winik (1944) recaps the ratcheting tensions over slavery that led to Southern secession, from the “Bleeding Kansas” violence of the 1850s to John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry. This is well-trod subject matter, but Winik breaks new ground in his detailed study of 11th-hour efforts to save the Union, especially the Crittenden Compromise, a set of constitutional amendments that would have permitted settlers to vote on slavery in the nation’s western territories and guaranteed states’ right to keep slavery forever. These proposals were rejected by a politics polarized between Republicans and secessionists, but Winik provocatively suggests that they had majority support among a public that dreaded secession and war, and would not have led to the extension of slavery in the territories, as the institution had little support among settlers. Winik presents a vivid, tragic narrative of a nation coming to pieces, where intransigence and mutual incomprehension—Lincoln, he observes, considered Southern secessionism just a negotiating ploy until almost the eve of war—made the unthinkable inevitable. Along the way, he weaves in evocative profiles of leading figures and their drift toward extremism. The result is a dramatic and insightful retelling of a fateful turn in America’s saga. (May)