Eric H. Walther’s work The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850’s sets the table so to speak, for the litany of literature that has been published on the Civil War. A prologue. This is the events, these are the people, the dialog, and the feelings that led to the session of 1860 and that great and terrible war.
Mr. Walther has written a concise, chronological history of the 1850s complete with a list of the cast and characters that played major roles in the events that lead to the (almost) breakup of the union. Stephen Douglas, William Yancey, John Brown, Franklin Pierce, Charles Sumner, and Preston Brooks. Fredrick Douglass, Roger B. Taney, Dred Scott, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln and many, many more were noted along with noble and nefarious actions of each and others. This is a period of time that I am not as familiar with as I feel I should be and wanted something to read that I could ingest without sacrificing all of my free time to finish within a short amount of time. This was a book I was looking for.
The book is written clearly and was quite easy to understand. It is a simple and straightforward history so the organization of and presentation of the material is standard. The author wanted to write a history of the time that is more succinct than some of the grand treatises that are available (i.e. David Potter’s The Impending Crisis). A book that could be used effectively in the classroom. This is a goal that Mr. Walther met with tremendous success. The chapters, each a year in the decade, are not tremendously long, but they do touch on the major events and actors of each period and are understandable by readers that are able to understand somewhat complex webs and interconnecting storylines. Perfect for the college student or armchair civil war/19th century scholar such as myself that is on a time constraint.
The resources that Walther are quality primary sources from the era and are used to great effect to emphasize the point at hand or describe the action, feeling, or person being discussed or analyzed. The end of each chapter has the notes and references listed as well (which I love to refer to). The chapters are presented with a fair and balanced point of view. I could not detect a bias of Northern or Southern. Though the majority of the book focuses on the action of politicians in Washington and the East, Walther does cover some of the events that took place in the West, though to ignore them would be criminal. But to put things in perspective, the big news stories of that decade were mostly made by politicians in the East (no offense to Lincoln and Douglas)
The only thing that is out of place when one first looks at this book is that is begins with the year 1852. I can understand not beginning with the year 1850 because there already is a title in this series that covers this year and the compromise in full (John C Waugh’s On the Brink of Civil War). The prologue touches these years a little bit, but you get the feeling that there is more to the story (especially the year 1851) that the author could have discussed. The prose was a little stiff too which can turn many readers off.
All-in-all I thought that this was a very good book that I would recommend to others. Is it a classic? No. But it is quite a good resource. ( )