Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis

David M. Potter is a very good author who wrote one of my favorite books, The Impending Crisis. This books covers a short section of the same period. Potter does very thorough research. His footnotes in this book are about seventy percent primary sources. There are citations to newspaper articles, the Congressional Globe and numerous letters. I can imagine that literally years of work went into this volume.
Potter is also a disciplined historian and always writes from the perspectives of the time he is writing about not from what we know now. Many historians cannot resist narrating from the present making all that has happened seem inevitable. This deprives the reader of learning what it was like to go through the events when the future show more was still unknown.
In this book Potter refutes the thesis of many Southern writers who argue that Lincoln tricked the South into starting the Civil War. The Lincoln portrayed here is almost naive in his belief of strong Unionist sentiment in the South. Many of his actions were taken in an attempt to bring about a peaceful reunion based upon this belief. This conclusion seems to be where the evidence led not the author seeking to come up with a controversial point of view to make a name for himself. I have never seen the idea of peaceful reunion emphasized as it is here. Lincoln's strategy was to keep the border states, including Virginia, from seceding. Then the seven gulf states would return. There was actually a period in February when five states voted against secession. Other writers seem to accept the secession and war as inevitable and do not explore the alternatives seen by the leadership at the time.
Seward was even more placating to the South and his attempt to run the administration began with the policy on Fort Sumter. As portrayed here up until early April of 1861 there was strong sentiment to evacuate the fort. Seward even made some commitments that the fort would be evacuated. It is these types of actions that are used to argue that the Northern leadership was maneuvering the South into starting the war. The Northern leadership actually allowed itself to be led astray by unrealistic optimism that the South would return without war. The actual beginning of the war is beyond the scope of the book.
This book was written in 1942 but the conclusions of the author are still new ideas in the writing about secession. I enjoyed the book and think that anyone studying this period should get the benefit of the author's perspective. show less