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North Carolina Office of Archives and History Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865 by Marc W. Kruman Review by: Whitman H. Ridgway The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (April 1984), pp. 256-257 Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518756 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 15:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . North Carolina Office of Archives and History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North Carolina Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:29:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865by Marc W. Kruman

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Page 1: Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865by Marc W. Kruman

North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865 by Marc W. KrumanReview by: Whitman H. RidgwayThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (April 1984), pp. 256-257Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518756 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 15:29

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

North Carolina Office of Archives and History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The North Carolina Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:29:44 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865by Marc W. Kruman

256 Book Reviews

A brief chapter by Joffre L. Coe concludes this book. His narrative of the development of North Carolina archaeology is a welcome synopsis, although many will justifiably clamor for a less abridged version. From this historical vantage, Coe perceives "explanation and frustration" as themes of current archaeology in North Carolina. It seems easy to argue that frustration will be minimized and explanation enhanced by efforts such as this published symposium.

Pennsylvania State University

Alan N. Snavely

Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865. By Marc W. Kruman. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Preface, acknowledgments,

abbreviations, tables, appendixes, bibliographical essay, index. Pp. xix, 304. Paper, $14.95; cloth, $37.50.)

While some historians focus on dominant personalities or events, oth ers assess how underlying structures influence these forces. Marc W. Kruman argues that the evolution of a vital two-party competition in North Carolina, dating from the Jacksonian era, helps to explain the

dynamics of state politics during the turbulent 1850s, the secession crisis, and through the war years. Considering that the Whig party self destructed as a political force in the 1850s and that the American and Union parties were little more than ephemeral shells thereafter, not to mention the splintering of the Democrats in 1860, such an argument might appear untenable. Notwithstanding this organizational carnage, Kruman's thesis is both sophisticated and subtle, and he argues it with

imagination and literary style. The party experience in North Carolina was both complex and lasting.

Party was used as an organization to mobilize the electorate and to advance partisan programs in the state legislature. The Whig program through the 1840s used the state to encourage economic development, with Democratic opposition, while in the 1850s this role was reversed. Even with the demise of several parties as organizations, the experience convinced leaders that parties were necessary to achieve specific goals and to protect essential interests, and former Whigs and dissident Demo crats worked to create some new organization. More importantly, leaders saw the party as a necessary institution to preserve basic rights against oppression. Oppression took many forms: in the early period the moneyed interests sought to use the power of the state to obtain privileges and thereby to oppress others; after the Mexican War, groups in Congress sought to enslave the South through antislavery legislation; during the secession crisis the actions of the Lincoln government challenged the rights of the states; and during the war the demands and actions of the central Confederate government generated the same pattern of resis tance. This reliance on two-party competition ended only in 1864 when the Conservative party splintered.

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Page 3: Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865by Marc W. Kruman

Book Reviews 257

The importance of this book is far greater than the history of a single state. Not only does it describe North Carolina politics over an extended

and eventful period, with greater subtlety than a short review permits, it

also reveals how times of crisis affect established institutions and parti san expectations. In addition, Kruman's analysis of the debate over state

sponsored development is a thoughtful expansion of the "positive and

negative liberal state" theme introduced by Lee Benson in The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy.

University of Maryland, College Park

Whitman H. Ridgway

Ever the Winds of Chance. By Carl Sandburg. With introduction by Margaret Sandburg and George Hendrick. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Introduction, illustrations, index. Pp. xvi, 172. $12.95.)

Two years after the appearance of Always the Young Strangers (1953), an

autobiography covering the first twenty years of his life (1878-1898),

seventy-seven-year-old Carl Sandburg began a second autobiography pick

ing up where the earlier one left off. Before ill health, flagging energies, and

other interests caused him to abandon the project in the fall of 1955, he

completed drafts of fifteen chapters covering the period 1898-1905. Now, almost three decades later, his fragmentary memoir about these formative

years is available in this edition.

The primary interest of Ever the Winds of Chance is the light it sheds on

the intellectual development of the celebrated proletarian poet, biographer, and socialist. In twelve of the fifteen chapters he recalls his years at Lom

bard College (1898-1902), recounting details and stories of the odd jobs,

liberal spirit, intellectual freedom, excellent professors and visiting lectur

ers, stimulating reading, enriching friends and acquaintances, broadening

social activities, and ample opportunities for writing and editing that

helped shape his "artless" style and progressive tenets. The last three

chapters chronicle his wanderings during the three years after he left

Lombard without a degree, a period when he "was fuzzy-minded and

troubled about how [he] wasn't connecting with anything in particular,

neither business nor writing." Secondary interests of the book include its

commentary on the history and doctrines of the Universalist church (which

founded Lombard College), glimpses of turn-of-the-century luminaries, and

extended passages of Sandburg's unpretentious, vibrant prose.

The editors—Sandburg's daughter Margaret of Asheville, North Caro

lina, and George Hendrick, an English professor at the University of Illi

nois at Urbana-Champaign—have provided a helpful introduction to the

work as well as numerous illustrations. They have also incorporated the

handwritten corrections and additions found on Sandburg's 123-page

typewritten manuscript, included notes and changes by Catherine

McCarthy of Harcourt Brace (an editor to whom Sandburg sent his drafts in

VOL UME LXI, NUMBER 2. APRIL, 1984

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