The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

by Michael F. Holt

Book Overview

How partisan politics lead to the Civil War

What brought about the Civil War? Leading historian Michael F. Holt convincingly offers a disturbingly contemporary answer: partisan politics. In this brilliant and succinct book, Holt distills a lifetime of scholarship to demonstrate that secession and war did not arise from two irreconcilable economies any more than from moral objections to slavery. Short-sighted politicians were to blame...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809044390
• ISBN13: 9780809044399
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Hill & Wang
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Great introduction

This book is a great introduction to the political causes of the Civil War. Holt has written an engaging, easily understood work that focuses on the key political events and players in the decades leading up to secession and war. Having studied this period for 10+ years now, I still came away with new bits of information and interpretations that I had not seen before. The only negative to the work is that it does not have any footnotes or endnotes, but that didn't detract that much from the book overall. Featuring a brief listing of books to consult for further information, Holt's work here should serve as a great introduction, or great refresher, for anyone interested in the topic.

A young Historians outlook...

Michael F. Holt makes a great argument on past historical events leading up to the Civil War. He states clearly in the preface that he is writing this book to reach a wider audience. (And from the other reviews I can see he did!) It is a resource book containing thoughts he previously used in his books on the Whigs and the 1850's, but if you're an American History teacher or professor this book could be used in the classroom. It is a great addition to my library and would easily work in an academic setting to hit on all the major "coming of events" before the War. The only probably I have with this book is that Mr. Holt portrays John C. Calhoun as a radical. While me might have been in the 1830's by the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850 Calhoun predicted the future of our Contry and in his address to Congress in 1850 urged for compromise over disunion. I still would recommend this book to anyone who wanted some straight answers to the Antibellum period of United States history.

Clarifies the reasons for the war

I have been visiting Civil War battlefields for over 20 years. The more I learned about the war, the more I wondered how it had ever happened. Michael Holt's book discusses the issues that rocked the country during the 1850's. But it also discusses how these issues affected the thinking of ordinary people in the North and the South. It helped me understand why the events from John Brown's raid to the firing on Ft. Sumter aroused such anger in the country.

A Story of Politicians and the Affect of their Actions

This short book by Michael Holt is the story of politics in America leading up to the Civil War. On the one hand, Holt makes a convincing argument that political leaders between 1820 and 1860 often acted out of raw political ambition rather than what was best for the country. In calculating the risk of taking certain actions Democrats, Whigs, and nascent Republicans took into account how their decisions would most affect their own political fortunes. While principle sometimes played a part, this can be seen in Calhoun's staunch support for slavery no matter what and Republican's anti-Southern stance in 1858 and 1680, in too many instances all that mattered was how issues can be leveraged to gain the most support for you in the next election. This is not a new idea in Civil War histories, but Holt makes an impressive case for it in just over 100 pages. The other theses of the book, the danger of sectionalism and the need to compromise, are also portrayed well. However, it is the danger of putting one's personal interests above the national that is the main lesson of this book. I don't believe another civil war is in any way imminent, but it would be wonderful if today's politicians would relearn that lesson. This book would be a great place for them to start.

Excellent introduction to a misunderstood topic

In The Fate of Their Country, Professor Holt skillfully and helpfully clarifies the vexed question of slavery extension, a controversy that played an important role in dividing North and South and setting the stage for war. This is a relatively short book, and for a reason: Professor Holt wishes to acquaint a larger audience with some of the important issues that he has covered at greater length in some of his other work. Hence this accessible introduction. What I find so interesting about the book is that it shows rather convincingly that debates over slavery extension were often not about slavery per se. The question of extending slavery into the territories became an issue of Southern honor: whether or not Southerners actually wanted to bring slaves into, say, New Mexico Territory (none were there by 1860), the issue became a matter of principle between sections of the country that had been so often at odds in the past. The insistence upon slavery's extension into the territories was often a matter of saving face for the South rather than (necessarily) a matter of actually desiring to bring slaves there, particularly since neither North nor South seriously expected slavery to take root in most of the places over which they argued at such length. Moreover, the subject of slavery extension came to symbolize all the differences between North and South, including controversies over the tariff, a homestead bill, internal improvement legislation, and the like. Professor Holt is certainly not saying that slavery played no role whatever in the coming of the Civil War. But the issue has often been misunderstood, and it is Holt's aim to provide the reader with the evidence and the historical background he needs to understand the context in which slavery extension was debated. He concludes that irresponsible politicians, for their own narrow partisan advantage, all too often exploited the issue for demagogic purposes, with (ultimately) tragic consequences. A superb book.