| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North. By Adam I. P. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xii, 266 pp. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-19-518865-3.)
Borrowing his title from Francis Lieber, Adam I. P. Smith nonetheless constructs a novel interpretation of Civil War politics that can resonate today as well (No Party Now, but All for Our Country, 1863). Many Civil War historians, including James Rawley and Eric McKitrick, have persuasively argued that the continuation of conventional two-party politics despite the pressure of war effectively bolstered Abraham Lincoln and his Republican party's efforts to defeat Southern secession and restore the Union. Public debates and frequent elections reinforced Republican unity and provided the ruling party essential public consent for extraordinary war efforts. Thus, normal party competition gave the Union one more powerful weapon against the overmatched one-party Confederacy of Jefferson Davis.	1
More to the point in Smith's analysis was how the dominant Northern party deftly used antiparty attitudes to ensure the party in power remained there. Patriotic appeals to transcend party for the sake of national unity and victory in war effectively cast the Democratic opposition in a less than legitimate role. Smith also demonstrates how more moderate and conservative Republicans employed antiparty sentiment to control "Union party" politics, while keeping radical Republicans somewhat at bay. In that argument, Smith's seemingly modern approach to the cynical nature of politicking is reminiscent of older "revisionist" studies that stressed suspicion of "radical" reconstruction schemes.	. . .

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