The Douglas Democracy and the Crisis of Disunion

Johannsen, Robert W.

doi:10.1353/cwh.1963.0049

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The years leading up to, during, and following the Civil War were "years of intense anxiety, as many categories in the United States were in flux" as a result of the shattering of the slave system (De Grave 1995, 120) and of the influx of immigrants. Countless historians have talked about sectional conflict between North and South in terms of crisis: "Sectional Crisis" (Graebner 1977;Rosenberg 1971) or a Crisis of Republicanism (Ambrosius 1990), a "Crisis of Disunion" (Johannsen 1963) or Crisis of the Union (Knoles 1965), a "Constitutional Crisis" (Bestor 1964), a "Crisis of Congress" (DiNunzio 1972), even a Crisis of Fear (Channing 1970) or a "Crisis in Law and Order" (Paludan 1972). Among many others, Bowman, titling his study of the Civil War At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (2010), characterizes sectional conflict as indeed a precipice, an existential point of political life or death, for the United States and her Constitution, exploring contemporaneous Southern alongside Northern arguments for the legitimacy of their respective actions-declarations of Secession and war, respectively.…”

Section: The (Il)legitimacy Of Secessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis Over Slavery

Ganser

2020

Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy

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As early as 1700, Samuel Sewall, the renowned Boston judge and diarist, connected "the two most dominant moral questions of that moment: the rapid rise of the slave trade and the support of global piracy" in many American colonies (Hanna 2015, 292). In the course of the eighteenth century, three textual moments prepared the grounds for a major semantic shift in the trope of piracy in the Atlantic context, turning its primary connotations from exploration and adventure to slavery and exploitation. First, Daniel Defoe's popular 1720 pirate novel Captain Singleton depicted pirates who liberated slave-ships, implying that the real criminals were slave-traders rather than pirates while simultaneously emphasizing that pirates themselves often profited from the triangular trade. This picaresque novel follows its narrator-protagonist, who goes to sea at the age of twelve, makes a fortune, crosses Africa on foot, loses his money, and makes another gain as a pirate before he is ultimately reformed. Adventure story and travel narrative, it explores society from the point of view of its maritime outcasts with one exception: an African slave's perspective. The critique of slavery is a major issue in Singleton, yet is eventually contained by the economic system in which the pirates operate. The following episode is exemplary in the way the novel's discourse cannot but contain its critique. In it, Captain Singleton and his

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Section: The (Il)legitimacy Of Secessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis Over Slavery

Ganser

2020

Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy

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The Democratic-Republicans before the Civil War: Political Ideology and Economic Change

Ashworth

1986

J. Am. Stud.

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When James K. Polk entered the White House in March 1845 all but a small minority of politicians acted and voted in accordance with the stated principles of one of two major parties. These parties were emphatically national in scope; each won support from all sections of the Union. Sixteen years later when it was the turn of Abraham Lincoln to enter the White House the situation was dramatically altered. Seven states from the Deep South had left the Union, four of the Upper South states were soon to follow. As the firing began at Fort Sumter, northerners of all parties rallied to the defence of the Union. A party system genuinely national in scope had been supplanted by sectional conflict that was about to erupt into Civil War.A key stage in this process occurred when northern Democrats challenged what seemed to be the increasingly evident southern dominance of their party. For many Democrats disillusionment did not come until close to the end of the decade. These Democrats remained within their party and supported Douglas in 1860. They were nevertheless by this time bitter in their denunciations of the South and the resolute defenders of the Union in the aftermath of secession.

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A Bibliography of Civil War Articles: 1963

Stoflet¹

1964

cwh

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The Douglas Democracy and the Crisis of Disunion

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis Over Slavery

Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis Over Slavery

The Democratic-Republicans before the Civil War: Political Ideology and Economic Change

A Bibliography of Civil War Articles: 1963

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