Contents
Although professional historians have varying degrees, they believe that slavery had a crucial role in the Civil War outbreak in America. There has been debate on how the battle over slavery and wage labor permeated sectional distinctions. Still, David Potter has done more than any other historian to create a consensus on the subject. Potter investigates how slavery sparked the Civil War in his book The Impending Crisis while criticizing generalizations that depict the cultural divide between the North and South. First, some people saw the conflict as a confrontation of vastly different cultures whose differences are beyond the debate over slavery. Secondly, others were more pragmatic, viewing the battle as a collision between an agricultural South and an industrialist North (Potter 15). Finally, there was a perspective that the conflict arose from different values between sections. Potter criticizes these three reasons because they all exaggerate the distinctions between the North and South while overlooking the commonalities. Potter shows the similarities between southerners and northerners and that a sense of American nationalism spread throughout the two cultures more than demonstrated by other historians.
Respect, Context & Steadiness
First, the people involved in the book are respected by Potter. He respects Presidents James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and other political strivers in the U.S. For a historian to accord, such respect is not easy (Potter 22). To make sense of his characters’ motivations, every writer must have great empathy for them, although it is possible to settle for a shallow or selective empathy. Some historians usually have a theoretical obstacle of tending to treat people as functions of their temporal, geographic, and economic coordinates. As a result, an American living in a specific location and year, with a particular ratio of free people to enslaved people, must have social and political beliefs shaped by these conditions. However, Potter maintains respect and prevents being deterministic in the book.
Secondly, Potter maintains his themes consistent throughout the whole book. This implies that he does not succumb to the lure of a thicket of colorful details of people’s events that can lead to losing sight of topics for extended periods (Green 3). Additionally, there is lost focus on the 1850s and how events appeared to the individuals who molded and lived during that time because he does not succumb to the temptations of lofty abstraction and futurism.
Finally, Potter takes the issues of time seriously, depending on the context of his time. In the 1850s, Americans had no idea that succession and war were coming, but they had increasingly feared for them to happen. Specific succession issues and problems, such as entangled with slavery, were what the voters, agitators, writers, and politicians handled directly or indirectly. Due to lack of resolution, sooner or later, these issues would acerbate tensions.
The book’s respect, context, and steadiness give Potter’s presentation solidity. Additionally, it ensures that his ideas are organized to appeal to and differ from other historians. Further on, it compels readers’ attention and sustains their interest at the level of his desire. This makes Potter a different historian because his presentation cannot be compared to others.
Issues Then and Now
America and its nature were shaped by struggles with issues of freedom, settlement, and expansion. Potter starts with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War and awarded the United States significant new land (Potter 47). This re-ignited the debate over if the west and southwest should be free or slave areas. Potter further describes and analyzes compromises, acts, and succession processes that led to the opening of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. Furthermore, the American Civil War can be viewed as a massive living knot tying together the concerns at the heart of American history and experience. Therefore, it is the leading cause of the ongoing character of America and itself. These concerns’ ramifications and even aftershocks continue to enlighten and perplex the U.S. today. No amount of glossing over, political correctness, or mistuned sensitivity can compensate for a proper understanding of American history.
Evaluation
I agree with the book’s conclusions that slavery is the leading cause of the Civil War in America. This is because slavery and the situation of African-Americans were at the heart of the problem that led to the Civil War in the United States. Additionally, the book supports what I have learned about the causes of the Civil War. In addition, I have noted some biases in Potter’s approach to the sectional crisis. Some of his biases are against anti-slavery activists to favoring white pro-slavery southerners. His biases can be categorized into linguistic, conceptual, misrepresenting events, and ultimately defending Southern actions (Gaughan 23). It should be noted that Potter was an American historian who specialized in studying Southern America. This is why he wrote The Impending Crisis, an in-depth narrative and analysis of the causes of the Civil War. Generally, I enjoyed reading the book, and I can recommend it to others to read as it narrates the actual cause of the Civil War.
Works Cited
Gaughan, Anthony J. “The Dynamics of Democratic Breakdown: A Case Study of The American Civil War”. British Journal of American Legal Studies, vol 0, no. 0, 2022, pp. 1-38. Walter De Gruyter Gmbh, Web.
Green, Michael. “Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom”. Civil War Book Review, vol 20, no. 3, 2018, pp. 2-4. Louisiana State University Libraries, Web.
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis: America before the Civil War, 1848-1861. Harper Collins, 1977, pp. 10-650.