New Perspectives on the Union War

Gary W. Gallagher, Elizabeth R. Varon

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780823284559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon, two of the most prominent nineteenth-century American historians in the nation, New Perspectives on the Union War provides a more nuanced understanding of what "Union" meant in the Civil War North by exploring how various groups of northerners conceived of the term. The essays in this volume demonstrate that while there was a broad consensus that the war was fought, or should be fought, for the cause of Union, there was bitter disagreement over how to define that cause—debate not only between political camps but also within them. The chapters touch on economics, politics, culture, military affairs, ethnicity, and questions relating to just war. Contributors: Michael T. Caires, Frank Cirillo, D.H. Dilbeck, Jack Furniss, Jesse George-Nichol, William B. Kurtz, Peter C. Luebke, and Tamika Nunley

Notes

Introduction

1. William T. Sherman, Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 708.

2. Edward Bates, The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866, ed. Howard K. Beale (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 413.

3. On the nineteenth-century importance and meanings of Union, see Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

4. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 4:264–65; Frederick Douglass, “Our Work Is Not Done,” speech delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held at Philadelphia, December 3–4, 1863, http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4403.

5. Edwards, as quoted in Gallagher, Union War, 107. On the meanings of disunion, see Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

6. On these debates, see William B. Kurtz, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015); J. Matthew Gallman, Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829–1889 (New York: Penguin, 2012).

Waiting for the Perfect Moment

1. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1885), 3:412. For more on Garrison, see Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998).

2. Liberator, July 12, 1861.

3. Studies in the first, inevitability school include Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2007); James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York: Norton, 2013); James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2014); and Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Knopf, 2011). Studies in the second, contingency school include Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); and Daniel W. Crofts, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

4. Liberator, June 28, 1861, June 20, 1862. A number of recent studies of Lincoln have presented a balanced portrayal of the president, acknowledging that, while he personally detested slavery, he put his constitutional duty of preserving the Union at all costs first. Such studies include Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (Edinburgh: Pearson Education, 2003); Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010); and Crofts, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery.

5. Liberator, March 8, 1861; Weekly Anglo-African, September 28, 1861. For more on abolitionists and nationalism, see Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002); W. Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); and A. J. Aiseirithe and Donald Yacovone, eds., Wendell Phillips: Social Justice and the Power of the Past (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016). For the definition of immediatist abolitionism, see James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1964; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 3.

6. The only dedicated study of the Fosters is Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery (New York: Norton, 1991). Other works that discuss the pair include McPherson, The Struggle for Equality; Margaret Hope Bacon, I Speak for My Slave Sister: The Life of Abby Kelley Foster (New York: T. Y. Crowell Co., 1974); Stacey Robertson, Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); and A. J. Aiseirithe, “Piloting the Car of Human Freedom: Abolitionism, Woman Suffrage, and the Problem of Radical Reform, 1860–1870,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2007. None of these works, however, discusses the Fosters with reference to their overarching moral nationalism.

7. Abby Kelley Foster to Alla Foster, October 1883, series 1, box 1, Kelley-Foster Papers, Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester, MA.

8. See Sterling, Ahead of Her Time, 214–27.

9. For the Fosters and nonresistance, see Sterling, Ahead of Her Time, 74.

10. For more on abolitionist doctrines and antebellum factions, see James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (1976; New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).

11. Liberator, May 10, 1861; Henry Grew, “To the Friends of Righteousness,” October 23, 1861, folder 1, Abolitionist Movement Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA.

12. Abby Kelley Foster to Sydney Howard Gay, April 19, 1850, box 13, Sydney Howard Gay Papers, Butler Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY (collection hereafter cited as SHG); Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, June 26, 1859, item 556, Crawford Blagden Collection of Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (collection hereafter cited as HOU).

13. Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, March 29, 185[6?], item 556, HOU; Liberator, February 4, 1859.

14. Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, March 29 and October 185[6?], item 556, HOU.

15. Liberator, 6 June 1856.

16. Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, March 29, 185[6?], item 556, HOU; Abby Kelley Foster to Stephen Symonds Foster, n.d. [1857?], box 2, Abby Kelley Foster Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA (collection hereafter cited as AAS); Liberator, February 4, 1859.

17. Liberator, February 4, 1859; Maria Weston Chapman to Sydney Howard Gay, n.d. [1858–1859], box 7, SHG; Maria Weston Chapman to Samuel May Jr., March 17, 185[7?], Ms.B.1.6 v.6, 53, Anti-Slavery Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston (collection hereafter cited as BPL); Maria Weston Chapman to Wendell Phillips, n.d. [1859?], item 394, HOU.

18. Abby Kelley Foster to Samuel May Jr., June 9, 1859, item 881, HOU; William Lloyd Garrison to Abby Kelley Foster, July 22, 1859, Ms.A.1.1 v.5, 96, BPL; Abby Kelley Foster to William Lloyd Garrison, July 22, 1859, item 10, Alma Lutz Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

19. William Lloyd Garrison to Abby Kelley Foster, July 25, 1859, Ms.A.1.1 v.5, 97, BPL; William Lloyd Garrison to Abby Kelley Foster, September 8, 1859, Ms.A.1.1 v.5, 98, BPL; Samuel May Jr. to Wendell Phillips, August 6, 1859, item 881, HOU.

20. Stephen Symonds Foster to Lysander Spooner, January 8, 1859, BPL; Stephen Symonds Foster to Wendell Phillips, n.d. [late 1850s], item 559, HOU. For more on Stephen’s political exploits, see Jane Pease and William H. Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,” in Abolitionism and American Reform, ed. John R. McKivigan (New York: Garland, 1999), 293–307.

21. Samuel May Jr. to Richard Davis Webb, August 7, 1859, Ms.B.1.6 v.7, 58, BPL; Stephen Symonds Foster to Wendell Phillips, n.d. [late 1850s], item 559, HOU; Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, July 21, 1857, item 556, HOU; Liberator, September 7, 28, 1860.

22. Abby Kelley Foster to Gerrit Smith, October 30, 1860, box 18, Gerrit Smith Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, December 9, 1860, item 556, HOU. For a pro-Lincoln abolitionist’s argument, see Douglass’ Monthly, November 1860.

23. Abby Kelley Foster to Wendell Phillips, December 9, 1860, item 556, HOU.

24. Liberator, February 1, March 8, 1861. For contingency and compromise during the secession winter, see Robert J. Cook, William L. Barney, and Elizabeth R. Varon, Secession Winter: When the Union Fell Apart (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); and Crofts, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery. For disunion, see Stewart, Holy Warriors.

25. Anti-Slavery Bugle, November 17, 1860; Worcester Spy, February 11, 1861; Wendell Phillips, “Disunion,” January 20, 1861, in Speeches, Lectures, and Letters by Wendell Phillips, ed. James Redpath (Boston: James Redpath, 1863), 370.

26. For the Fosters and disunionism, see Pease and Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition.”

27. Proceedings of the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends (Waterloo Meeting) (Cortland, NY: Van Slyck and Ford’s, 1861), 24; William Lloyd Garrison to Wendell Phillip...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Waiting for the Perfect Moment: Abby Kelley Foster and Stephen Foster’s Union War
• Elizabeth Keckly’s Union War
• To Save the Union “in Behalf of Conservative Men”: Horatio Seymour and the Democratic Vision for War
• The Union as It Was: Northern Catholics’ Conservative Unionism
• “Certain Ill-Considered Phrases”: Edward Bates and the Disunionist Dangers of Radical Rhetoric
• “Responsible to One Another and to God”: Why Francis Lieber Believed the Union War Must Remain a Just War
• Building a Union of Banks: Salmon P. Chase and the Creation of the National Banking System
• “To Transmit and Perpetuate the Fruits of This Victory”: Union Regimental Histories and the Great Rebellion in Immediate Retrospect
• Notes
• Bibliographic Note
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Series List