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The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement 1861-1865by Arnold M. Shankman

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Page 1: The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement 1861-1865by Arnold M. Shankman

The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement 1861-1865 by Arnold M. ShankmanReview by: John F. ColemanThe American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 5 (Dec., 1981), p. 1151Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1858650 .

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Page 2: The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement 1861-1865by Arnold M. Shankman

United States 1151

themselves. They are known to contain errors of large magnitudes; the art of counting is still under considerable suspicion, but it is certainly better today than it was when the 1840-60 censuses were taken.

Some readers will have trouble with Pred's agile math; they will profit from the book without trying to follow these operations. Some will find it too for- mal-but this is a built-in condition of model building. This book is not narrative history; it is a much-needed analysis of the stage on which the narratives have been enacted.

A. THEODORE BROWN

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

ARNOLD M. SHANKMAN. The Pennsylvania Antiwar Move- ment, 1861-1865. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dick- inson University Press. 1980. Pp. 236. $19.50.

This brief survey of political opposition to the Civil War in Pennsylvania asserts for the movement a significance comparable to that which it attained in the Midwest, the border states, and New York. The author, Arnold M. Shankman, begins his narrative with a description of a Democratic party in disarray in the aftermath of Republican gubernatorial and presidential victories in 1860, the secession crisis, and the failed search for compromise. With the out- break of hostilities, "the overwhelming majority" (p. 64) of Democrats supported Lincoln's decision to suppress the rebellion by force, and thousands re- sponded to his call for volunteers to do so.

By the fall of 1862, however, a significant antiwar faction had emerged within Democratic ranks, buoyed by dashed expectations of a quick Union victory and extended casualty lists, by "the ever-in- creasing centralization of power in Washington" (p. 82), and by opposition to Lincoln's announced in- tention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Antiwar Democrats, in turn, were divided. "Peace at any price" men-estimated as having never ex- ceeded 10 percent of the state's voters-demanded an end to hostilities even if it meant permanent sep- aration. Some urged that Pennsylvania join the Confederacy. A larger group, "peace Democrats" or "Copperheads," were more moderate and consti- tuted "the loyal opposition to the Lincoln adminis- tration" (p. 15). Calling for an end to the fighting and reconciliation through negotiation, they gradu- ally assumed control of the Democratic party under the slogan, "The Union as it was and the Constitu- tion as it is." At the height of their influence in the fall of 1863, their candidate for governor, George W. Woodward, came within 15,325 votes of defeat- ing incumbent Andrew G. Curtin in an election in which over 520,000 votes were cast. However,

Union victories in the field undermined the antiwar movement thereafter, and Lincoln's defeat of Dem- ocratic presidential candidate George B. McClellan in state and nation in November 1864 sounded the death knell for Copperheadism in Pennsylvania. By January 1865 "probably less than ten percent of the state's Democracy called for a non-military solution to the war" (p. 219). The enduring significance of the movement, the author concludes, is that despite personal vilification and worse, "Pennsylvania Cop- perheads stood up and reminded the nation that the Constitution applied both in time of war and in time of peace" (p. 219).

Shankman's account, although interesting, is un- distinguished in style and largely descriptive in con- tent. He makes little effort, quantitatively or other- wise, to analyze closely who the "peace Democrats" were or why they held their distinctive views. He is inclined, instead, to broad generalizations or to ref- erences to specific leaders only. Moreover, his treat- ment of the antiwar movement is uncritical, and he probes neither the motives of the participants nor the consequences of their conduct for the Lincoln administration or for the future of the Democratic party in Pennsylvania. Readers will be distracted by the placement of documentation at the end of each chapter, by the occasional absence of docu- mentation of significant conclusions, and by scat- tered typographical errors-a few of which alter the author's presumed meaning. Nonetheless, as anti- war sentiment in Pennsylvania has not previously been subjected to extended scrutiny and its dimen sions have been generally minimized, those inte- ested in the subject will find this study both useful and corrective.

JOHN F. COLEMAN

St. Francis College Loretto, Pennsylvania

DICKSON J. PRESTON. Young Frederick Douglass: The Mary- land Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1980. Pp. xvii, 242. $15.00.

Frederick Douglass clearly deserves his reputation as the major black figure of the nineteenth century. Spanning the final years of slavery and the first gen- eration of freedom, his struggle for his personal free- dom and for the liberation of his people is one of the great sagas of American history.

Douglass was the author of three separate auto- biographical works published between 1845 and 1891 that cover his years as a slave, but this care- fully researched work by journalist Dickson J. Pres- ton offers a fresh new perspective. Digging deeply into archival materials, examining papers, and inter- viewing descendants of Talbot County slaveholding families, and steeping himself in a vast array of

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