There Is A North: Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, And Cultural Transformation In The Coming Of The Civil War, by John L. Brooke

Though this is a very complicated book with a difficult language–its discussion of the crisis period before the American Civil War as one of liminality–at its core there is a very simple matter of grammar. As it happens, the most important word of its title is the single and often neglected word “a.” The author asserts that the main question of the antebellum period and the reason for the existence of the permanent latent crisis within American politics in the period before 1860 was the question of whether there was a north that had a unified and distinct view from the South. As it happens, the South, for all of its division, was generally unified on the importance of preserving and even expanding slavery and on avoiding any hint that slavery or that slaveowners were in any way inferior or wrong when compared with their Northern neighbors. Nor was there any great division between blacks in their desire to be free and treated with dignity and respect. These remained constant in the period from American independence to the Civil War. What changed, and what allowed for the Civil War to happen, is that enough Northern whites felt a degree of human sympathy for blacks to desire their freedom and hostility towards the efforts of the minority South to dominate the United States and its political and religious institutions to lead to enough Northerners to vote for antislavery political candidates. Once this happened in sufficient numbers, the Civil War was bound to happen once the North refused to submit to Southern demands.

This book explains that easy enough to understand point in a bit more than 300 pages densely discussed with discussions of the creolization of American culture as well as the vital importance of the crisis over California and then that of Kansas-Nebraska, followed by cross-currents involving nativism, in shaping Northern public opinion such that the rising sentiment of compassion for blacks eventually had a political outlet in the creation of a Republican party that could gain the presidency through having a slight majority in the North, even without a presence in the Deep South at all. To be sure, this book could have explained its point in a way that was far less academic in nature, but this is not a book that is written for ordinary readers but rather for contemporary academics who are familiar with statistical analysis and also with views on the logic of history wherein institutions and the people who rule them must operate within constraints, and deal with crises that limit options and thus provide a limited amount of room for a statesman or politician or other kind of leader to operate within. The author also manages to discuss the deep and painful human cost of the crises of the 1850’s, which fed into the catastrophic crisis of the Civil War which led to hundreds of thousands of dead, and a fundamental shift in the political culture of the United States as a whole, one that reverberates to this day.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The book begins with a list of figures, a preface and acknowledgements, and a chronology of the period between 1846 and 1861. The introduction discusses the author’s thesis and focus on themes of confluence, creolization (the blending of black and white cultures together), liminal crisis, and the antislavery North and its importance. This is followed by a discussion of the challenges the rise of abolitionism and antislavery efforts made to antebellum political and social structures (1). After this comes a discussion of the Compromise of 1850 and its role in defending that structure of the Second Party system and its related institutions (2). After this, the author discusses the role of fugitives and the enforcement of the fugitive slave act in the rising sense of crisis in the North against Southern domination (3). This is followed by a discussion of the creative liminality of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a related minstrel culture that shaped Northern sympathy with blacks (4). This follows into a discussion of transforming culture, so that antislavery efforts became profitable as theater plays and other sorts of shows (5). The author then discusses how the guarantees of 1850 and before were violated in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act which passed due to a temporary political majority for Democrats in the aftermath of the Whig collapse (6). This is followed by a discussion of the restructuring coalescence that drove efforts to form a nativist party (which foundered on the slavery issue) as well as efforts to create a fusion among antislavery Northern voters in the period between 1854 and 1856 (7). Finally, the author discusses the confirmation and consolidation of this new antislavery fusion in the Republican party and its rise between 1856 and 1860, where it took the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s victory (8). The book then closes with an epilogue about the war and its effects, after which there is an appendix of tables, notes, and an index.