Ordeal of the Union, Vol 2: A House Dividing, 1852-57 by Allan NevinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Compromise in politics is not clean, nobody gets a 100% of what they want but to get some what they do and to keep peace they’re willing to endure something they dislike, but when one side decides to betray the other…hell hath no fury. Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 is the second of Allan Nevins’ eight volume series on the lead to and history of the American Civil War with the focus on how a compromise to keep the peace was undermined by one of its architects and how all concerned reacted.
Nevins begins the volume by introducing the factor that he believed upset the hard fought and crafted Compromise of 1850 between North and South, Franklin Pierce. A dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1852 that benefited from being seen as the candidate that supported “the Compromise” only to show his fickleness and weakness by appointing those on either side of the anti-Compromise North and South into his administration thus sowing the seeds of discord. With a weak President potentially causing a rift in the party along with various economic factors at stake, Stephen Douglas brought further the Kansas-Nebraska Bill which shattered the Compromise he helped pass, destroy the Whig Party while dividing the Democratic and bringing furth the Republicans, and causing bloodshed on the plains of Kansas. Nevins shows how a weak man, another in a line of such men to occupy the White House, allowed the nation to literally begin killing over the future of slavery in the nation just a few years after it appeared everyone had peacefully agreed on a ‘final’ settlement. But while the domestic situation was tearing a part, internationally the United States looked incompetent as its ambassadors in Europe made fools of themselves while private citizens waged wars of conquest in various Latin American nations. Over the course of one Presidential term, the nation went from peaceful to threatening to tear itself apart when the election of 1856 saw the nation decide upon the one candidate that looked like he would bring peace and unity back to the nation, James Buchanan, surely things would be looking up.
Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two reveals how the United States unraveled so quickly towards civil war thanks to the poor judgment of one individual compounded by another. Allan Nevins explores not only the political, but the economic and cultural situations in both North and South which revealed shows the two halves of the nation apparently becoming two, as if a clash was becoming unavoidable.
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