The Politics of Union

The best general account of politics in the North, as David Herbert Donald calls this book, is also the first one-volume history of its subject. Abraham Lincolns single goal of saving the Union required not simply subduing the South but contending as well with divisiveness in the Northwith refractory state officials, draft resisters, peace advocates, secret organizations, with Northern Democrats (too often seen only as Copperheads or as traitors to the Union), and with powerful Republicans who often vocally disagreed with Lincolns policies. In this account, Radical Republicans represent consensus with Lincoln more than conflict, sectional more than economic interests, and party over faction. Largely, dissent was heard and accommodated; and, if the federal legislation of the time did amount to a Second American Revolution, it emerged from the conflicts, within the North as well as against the South, of a nation at war. The outcome was a nation not only saved but strengthened and slavery ended.