The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860 by Louis FillerReview by: Avery CravenThe American Historical Review, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Jul., 1961), pp. 1066-1067Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1845922 .

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i o66 Reviews of Books

fresh interpretation, but as a narrative of the facts it will no doubt prove to be more useful than any other single volume.

Stanford University D. E. FEHRENBACHER

THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY, 1830-i860. By Louis Filler. [The New American Nation Series.] (New York: Harper and Brothers. i960. Pp. xvii, 318. $5.oo.)

THE word "slavery" always carries a heavy emotional charge. It had to do with moral values in Civil War days, and ever after it has symbolized America's dedication to democratic principles. As a result, it has been nearly impossible for the scholar to evaluate the institution or the crusade against it objectively. All ques- tions and all answers have become stereotyped. The terms "good" and "bad' alone apply.

The present volume illustrates this point. The author accepts, without raising a single question, all the traditional assumptions regarding slavery, the South, and the abolitionists. He enlists in the crusade and sees abolition as "the central hub of reform" in an era of intense ferment of all kinds. In organization and content he follows the usual pattern which begins with "abolition before Garrison" and ends with "Kansas and . . . the irrepressible conflict." Within these limits, his researches have been exhaustive and his contribution considerable. He adds new names and new details to the usual story. He takes sharp issue with Gilbert Barnes as to whether "the moral crusade had done its work by I839," and as to the rela- tive importance of Theodore Weld and William Lloyd Garrison. He stands firmly behind Garrison as the one man who kept the moral issue before the public to the very end. He finds a larger place in the movement for such figures as Myron Holley, Le Roy Sutherland, Henry C. Wright, the Negro leaders, and the women. He rightly sees antislavery as related to the revivals and to other reforms. He is probably right in his belief that Garrison's attitudes differed from those of others only in degree. In fact, he has produced a volume that will serve as a good refer- ence work for anyone seeking information regarding individuals and groups con- nected with the antislavery crusade.

What he has not done is to tell us why the crusade against an institution that had been around so long should suddenly have "burst upon the public in the I830's." Filler sees nothing in the immediate environment or in the personal experiences of the abolitionist that caused him to center his efforts on an institu- tion with which he had little or no personal contact. The author's constant use of the term "the South" as a region where everyone thought alike raises the question as to whether it is possible to understand a reform movement without a sound knowledge of the thing to be reformed and those connected with it. Nor has Filler

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Cturrent et al.: Why the North Won the Civil War Io67

explained why the Republican party, which was not exactly abolitionist, ultimately took over the practical task of abolishing slavery.

University of Chicago AVERY CRAVEN

WHY THE NORTH WON THE CIVIL WAR. By Richard N. Current et al. Edited by David Donald. ([Baton Rouge:] Louisiana State University Press. 1960. Pp. xv, 128. $2.95.)

IN I957, as a part of the celebration of the 125th anniversary of Gettysburg College, the late Professor Robert Fortenbaugh suggested a three-day conference in which leading authorities would discuss various aspects of the Civil \War. The resounding success of that conference, under the direction of Professor Allan Nevins of Columbia University, led to its becoming an annual affair. This book is the product of the second conference.

It opens with Richard N. Current's emphatic answer to the question posed by the title. After balancing the traditional southern advantages of defensive position and psychology, terrain, and an outdoor and agriculturally self-sufficient people against traditional handicaps and blunders, Current traces the fundamental basis of victory to a northern economic superiority so great that it could have been dissipated only by most improbable military or diplomatic events. Next T. Harry Williams evaluates the influence on both northern and southern commanders of Antoine Henri Jomini's writings, and those of his West Point advocate, Dennis Hart Mahan, stressing position warfare and a rapid tactical offensive. Professor Williams believes that circumstances led the North to emphasize unwisely the first of these principles and the South to employ the second brilliantly in the earlier part of the war. Eventually the North advanced to truer military principles beyond Jomini and won.

In the third essay Norman Graebner holds that the basic reason that England decided not to intervene in the war was simply that to have done so would have violated too deeply the general principle of nonintervention to which she had be- come committed. David Donald maintains that an excess of democracy (in Tocque- ville's sense of obstinate individualism and leveling tendencies) killed the Confed- eracy. David M. Potter holds that defective southern policies with reference to taxation, cotton, impressment of supplies, use of slave labor, and, more specifically, the deficiencies of President Davis as a civil, popular, and military leader turned the balance. Throughout the conflict Davis, a parvenu among the old-line aristo- crats, was so intent upon justifying a lost cause in advance that he could never give proper attention to making it a winning one.

Each of these essays repays the reader. Differing in their viewpoints, none is irreconcilable with the others. One may question whether neglect of the factor that offered the Confederacy its only real hope in the last half of the war, that of

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