Book Review

Canada and the United States

It is always difficult to review (or be reviewed by) someone from another discipline. Kimberly K. Smith is a political scientist whose book is intended as a contribution to democratic theory. More specifically, she challenges Jürgen Habermas and others who insist on identifying democratic politics with purely rational debate. Smith would expand the notion of what is legitimate by giving a politics of interest, passion, compassion, and even violence a historical pedigree, thus finding ancestors for the dissidents of the 1960s, among others, in the abolitionist movement. Her points are made through an examination of key texts, including novels, speeches, essays, and editorials from the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Most historians, while perhaps sympathizing with the end, will find the exercise questionable.

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Smith's book avoids many of the more obvious problems. It is intelligent, wholly accessible, and free of jargon of any kind. Many of its components, such as a close reading of the problem of reason and morality in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), or an explanation of the function of preaching and prophecy among classical Calvinists, should impress readers regardless of discipline. But even without the numerous minor errors, or a warning that Philadelphia's "Native American" Party in the 1840s did not speak for the American Indians (p. 61), it is clear that Smith is writing for those more familiar with political theory than with the historical period under review.

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