The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan & Party Chaos, 1857-59 by Allan NevinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The 1856 election was supposed to unite the country and save it from the festering issue of Kansas territory, unfortunately the politically spineless James Buchanan turned out to be worse than Franklin Pierce. The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume I: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-59 is the third book of Allan Nevins’ Ordeal of the Union series, an eight-volume history of the lead up to and of the American Civil War, featuring how the last remaining link between North and South in the form of the Democratic party was broken in twain by the decisions of two men.
From the outset Nevins reveals that the country needed a national figure with a vision of national scope to unite the three major regions of the country—North, South, and growing West—but sadly for the United States the man coming into office in March 1857 was James Buchanan who in making up his cabinet became a passive functionary in his own administration. When Buchanan gave prominence to Southern politicians and anti-Douglas Democrats, the stage was set for the dividing of the party and the rise of the Republicans in the North as Douglas Democrats and Lecompton Democrats—named for their support of the pro-slavery constitution for Kansas that was drafted by convention assembled by a rigged election—set the stage for chaotic Presidential contest in 1860. Besides the congressional battle between opponents and supporters for the pro-slavery Kansas constitution, Nevins’ other major focus was the Lincoln-Douglas debates which saw Abraham Lincoln’s emergence on the national scene for the first time as well as detailing what the two politicians spoke about in each debate. Just to through in an additional element to all of this was the Panic of 1857 with its effects in economic terms and political perceptions—whether right or wrong—on all sections of the country. Yet Nevins also wrote about the Dred Scott decision and the Mormon War with their effects on the various elements in the country, the fact that I’m just barely mentioning them shows how much Nevin’s writing made me highlight other things. Honestly, there is so much I learned that I had previously just had a superficial knowledge of.
The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume I reveals how incompetent national leadership exasperated the rising sectional differences while both sides of the divide took different lessons from a economic panic as well as how the growing West were affecting things.
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