Cry Havoc: The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 Review

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(More customer reviews)Author Lankford has written an extremely interesting thesis covering the period from Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861 to May 27th. He treats the South as having two distinct groupings; the lower South of seven states that formed the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama prior to Lincoln's taking office (South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) and the upper South of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri and Delaware. Even with the lower South already in secession and South Carolina besieging Fort Sumpter Lincoln was faced with many possible courses of action, particularly since there was substantial union sentiment in the upper South that was opposed to secession if some compromise could be reached on slavery and if Lincoln could be accommodating.
Historians today tend to dismiss the unionists in the upper South as naive since their cause proved to be futile in the face of Lincoln's intransigence, but it did not look hopeless at the time. After all, compromises had been made over slavery a number of times in the past, and as we know in modern times, presidential candidates often say things while campaigning that they repudiate when in office. Lincoln, however, was no modern politician.
In the upper South prior to Lincoln's inauguration, secession was soundly defeated in Arkansas, Virginia and Missouri, somewhat narrowly in North Carolina, and Tennessee voters overwhelming voted down even the formation of a convention to consider secession. The trick would be to hold those states in the Union, but as it turned out, any military action against the seven states in secession would turn all but Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the non-slave holding areas of West Virginia, East Tennessee, Northern Arkansas and Northern Alabama firmly against the Union.
Significant efforts were made to find a compromise, even by Seward who attempted to undermine Lincoln, but all were probably doomed when Lincoln decided to resupply Fort Sumpter. The hotheads in South Carolina took Lincoln's action as a provocation and reacted with a much more serious provocation -- firing on Fort Sumpter. Still the upper South hesitated to see what would happen. If Lincoln allowed this provocation to go unanswered and appeased the lower South, peace was still possible even at that late date. Certainly modern politicians would give such appeasement great consideration.
But Lincoln reacted to the Fort Sumpter attack in the only way he could to avoid massive problems in the North -- he issued a call for all loyal states, including those of the upper South, to activate their militias and supply 75,000 soldiers for three months service. He based his authority on the 1795 militia act, a law totally forgotten by anti-gun activitists in contemporary times. Of the 94 regiments requested, 21 were to come from the upper South. This proclamation put the fat into the fire and destroyed the unionist support in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. They quickly joined the Confederacy, thus making it a much more viable political entity. Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland fractured politicaly, but prompt efforts by unionists in those states held them "neutral" (although all sent soldiers to both sides.) Delaware was relatively easily held for the Union. and West Virigina was eventually split off into a separate state.
All this political interplay is fascinating, especially so because this period is generally skipped over in American history textbooks. Lincoln and the unionists in the upper South possessed other options, but Lincoln played his cards as all or nothing after Sumpter (all-in in poker terminology), and those options were swept from the table. The author does not blame Lincoln for the outbreak of the war -- that is firmly placed on the South Carolinians as it should. He was however, not willing to compromise on his principles, and the end of slavery in the US was the laudable result. And in the end, Lincoln along with hundreds of thousands of Americans paid the ultimate price for that result and the reconsolidation of the US into a single country for the next 150 years.
The writing is reasonably good, but a little disjointed. The average general reader will probably find all the political details and background somewhat boring, but the serious Civil Was historian will not. The author makes extensive use of quotations from newspapers and speeches at the time, and it must be remembered that newspapers in the 1860s more accurately reflected public opinion than do today's propaganda organs like the New York Times.
I recommend this book to everyone interested in the Civil War era. The book covers a very limited period, but it does it well. If some of the author's conclusions are controversial, then read the detail and make your own analysis. The book contains enough balanced information for the reader to reach informed conclusions. On that note, what more can be said?

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