Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors to Volume II
- Note on the Text
- Part I Causes
- Part II Managing the War
- Part III The Global War
- Part IV Politics
- 18 Radicals and Republicans
- 19 Northern Democrats
- 20 Confederate Politics
- 21 Lincoln and the War
- 22 Peace and Dissent in the North
- 23 African American Political Activism
- 24 Davis and the War
- 25 Peace and Dissent in the South
- Index
- References
19 - Northern Democrats
from Part IV - Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2019
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors to Volume II
- Note on the Text
- Part I Causes
- Part II Managing the War
- Part III The Global War
- Part IV Politics
- 18 Radicals and Republicans
- 19 Northern Democrats
- 20 Confederate Politics
- 21 Lincoln and the War
- 22 Peace and Dissent in the North
- 23 African American Political Activism
- 24 Davis and the War
- 25 Peace and Dissent in the South
- Index
- References
Summary
That almost half the Northern electorate continued to vote for Democrats is one of the worst understood aspects of the Civil War experience. In too many accounts of the war, Northern Democrats either do not figure at all, or do so only as morally blind obstructionists on the wrong side of history. Yet there is a case for saying that rather than being peripheral to the narrative of the war, Northern Democrats should be center stage. Because the route to Confederate victory lay in convincing the North that the cost of coercion was too high to be worth paying, the views and actions of that large and fluctuating group of white Northerners who had never joined the Republican bandwagon was crucial.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 394 - 413Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
References
Key Works
Baker, Jean H. Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of the Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Furniss, Jack. “To Save the Union ‘in Behalf of Conservative Men’: Horatio Seymour and the Democratic Vision of the Union War,” in Gallagher, Gary W. and Varon, Elizabeth R. (eds.), New Perspectives on the Union War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Gallman, J. Matthew. Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture and the Union Home Front (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Holt, Michael F. “An Elusive Synthesis,” in McPherson, James M. and Cooper, William J. (eds.), Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 112–34.Google Scholar
Klement, Frank L. Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies and Treason Trials in the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Klement, Frank L. The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1970).Google Scholar
Mach, Thomas. “Gentleman George” Hunt Pendleton: Party Politics and Ideological Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Sandow, Robert M. Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Silbey, Joel H. A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1868 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977).Google Scholar
Smith, Adam I. P. No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Warshauer, Matthew. Connecticut in the American Civil War (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Weber, Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).Google Scholar