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Reviews
| The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America, by Robert Pierce Forbes. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 384 pages. $45.00, cloth.
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| The publisher claims it its promotional materials that this is the "first full-length study of Missouri Compromise in almost half a century," but this ambitious book is both much more and a little bit less than that. Contrary to the title, the Missouri Compromise (which is covered in the first half of the book) and its aftermath are not really the main focus of the book. The book features an unambiguous hero and villain (James Monroe and Martin Van Buren), but it is not really about them either. It is the subtitle which reveals the breathtaking scope of the author's intention, which is to re-evaluate the place of slavery in the very meaning of America. |
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The standard historical interpretation of the Missouri Compromise is that of Jefferson's "firebell in the night," in which the issue of slavery was debated briefly and then submerged into the national subconscious, kept there through the 1830s by the Gag Rule, not to emerge again fully until the repeal of the Compromise in 1854. Forbes agrees that the Missouri Compromise did allow a moment of open national debate over slavery, but he takes strong issue with the idea that slavery ever ceased to be the most important political issue from then until the outbreak of the Civil War. In the process, he criticizes past historians for trying to write the political history of that era without recognizing how the attempt to preserve slavery determined the contours of every other political issue, or for treating American slavery as an epihistorical phenomenon that "just was" and cannot be explained in political terms. |
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The debate over the admission of Missouri is presented in the context of the presidency of James Monroe, whom Forbes regards as the country's most underrated Chief Executive. He describes Monroe as a nationalist who favored colonization as an ultimate solution to the problem of slavery, and as a master tactician who was willing to allow slavery in Missouri in order to secure more long range political goals, such as the dissolution of political parties. In the aftermath of the Compromise, Martin Van Buren emerges as a major figure whose devotion to the ideal of a strong Jeffersonian party leads him to make policy decisions that strengthen the Southern defenders of slavery, even though he had no particular interest in the institution. As a result of specific political decisions, many of them tied to the changing balance of power between the North and the South, Forbes portrays Southern slaveholders moving away from the national consensus that had prevailed before 1820, that slavery was a necessary evil, toward the purely sectional view that it was a "positive good," just as some Northerners were moving toward the view that slavery was evil but not necessary. |
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These few sentences barely hint at the boldness and breadth of the book. It represents not only a major reinterpretation of American political history from 1820 to 1840, but a new way of conceptualizing all of American antebellum history, centered around the conflict between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence on one hand, and the realities of slavery on the other. It assumes considerable knowledge on the part of the reader, sometimes to the point that the narrative omits or glosses over significant facts; for example, in the discussion of the Missouri Compromise, the sequence in which various proposals were debated and rejected or approved is unclear. The book would thus probably not be suitable for use in high school or introductory college courses, but it would be ideal for study in a graduate seminar. The author frequently engages other historians in the text, sometimes slipping into the first person to contrast his views to those of Remini, Wilentz, and other scholars. The emphasis on historiography makes the absence of a bibliography particularly frustrating, ameliorated somewhat by the excellent and occasionally entertaining reference notes, which reflect thorough familiarity with the secondary literature as well as substantial primary source research. |
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Overall, this is a book that is filled with fascinating new insights that challenge and, in some cases, clearly supplant traditional interpretations. The description of how some slaveholders accepted the antislavery argument that slaveholding was a sin, and then twisted it into a defense of the institution, would alone make it worth reading. It may not be a book to assign in class, but unless they are willing to risk becoming purveyors of relic knowledge, no teachers of American history can afford to miss this book for their own enrichment. |
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| East Carolina University |
Gerald J. Prokopowicz |
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