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Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War
Race and Politics offers an analysis of the controversies that followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The question of whether the still unsettled Kansas Territory should be slave or free divided the nation into hostile and ultimately irreconcilable camps, creating conditions that only civil war could resolve. The author demonstrates, however, that the fundamental issue was not slavery as such but race : whether the country, its egalitarian slogans notwithstanding, could tolerate the expansion of African Americans, slave or free. "Rawley in his introduction, a semi-apologia, questions the need for another book on the Civil War. He answers his own question, giving two first, to reveal how the Kansas upheaval became a main political preoccupation of the country before the war; second, to emphasize how deeply prejudice pervaded the entire populace, both Northern and Southern. In filling in the structure of these two justifications, Rawley achieves his goal in an admirable way."—Gene M. Gressley, Library Journal . "Based to a considerable degree upon an examination of voluminous manuscript sources. New data relating to inner-political maneuvers, on the part of the Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans are brought forward."— Annals of the American Academy .
- GenresNonfiction
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
About the author
James A. Rawley
24 books2 followersJames A. Rawley was professor of history emeritus at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 26, 2019
“In summary, the Civil War erupted because of the presence in the United States of the Negro race.”
Such is Professor Rawley’s contentious position in the epilogue to his seminal study of “Bleeding Kansas,” (p.272). Written in the 1960s, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and an ongoing war in Vietnam, Rawley wrote as one of the new “revisionist” historians applying new prisms to old stories. What he found was – as with all “new” discoveries – actually right there in front and plain view all along. His main theme is that racialism has been the founding theme of American society from the inception; that the only real sectional differences in the US – peopled largely by persons of the same Anglo-Celtic-Teutonic stock – was the concentration of blacks in one region; their existence allowed in the south only because they were slaves, and feared in the north as a spreading social “menace.” The Republican Party was not founded by John Brown-like abolitionists, but for the benefit of the white northern majority who feared the likes of John Brown. The “good intentions” projected onto it by idealistic historians was, like southern revisionism, a face-saving construct of later years.
Having seen much of the same evidence Rawley marshals I can’t say I disagree with him, though at first he seems to pursue a reductionism similar to the political and economic historians he critiques. (Also becoming somewhat repetitious in stating his own case.) By viewing the color bar, not the Mason-Dixon Line or capitalism vs. slavery, as the source of the “irrepressible conflict” he ironically echoes D. W. Griffith in the pro-Klan film “Birth of a Nation,” blaming disunity on the presence of “the African.” Yet race as an historical causative factor seemed so explosive precisely because of its general avoidance: a topic too passionate for “professional discussion” in public, except in carefully-prescribed settings; or too discomforting for “polite company” in private. So too in academia, Rawley contended, causing historians to blame the cause of war on slavery while avoiding the identity of the enslaved.
There were other “threats to democracy” in the era, many of which are still with us: the “entitlements” of class and property; sexism, nativism, militarism, religious dogma. In truth, there is no separating racism, exploitation, or imperial expansion. Rawley states that slavery was justified by limiting it to Africans, who could be reduced by law to semi-human status because of their race. I’ve found it also nullified the “threat of democracy” in colonial Virginia by Bacon’s Rebellion and the English Bill of Rights of 1688 (slavery first “expanded” ca. 1690 – surprise!) Rawley’s book shows that the 19th century’s civil war began not at Bull Run, nor ended at Appamatox; but was a full era that originated in the bloody plains of Kansas in the mid-1850s, and didn’t end until the close of Reconstruction twenty years later.
In Rawley’s book it’s seen that democracy for the white majority came at the expense of a vulnerable racial underclass, whose very presence became a feared threat to democracy and social unity, not just jobs and land. Much the same can be said for modern corporate “persons” also owned by an entitled caste. The American “political genius” has yet to find a way out of a fiendishly clever trap plotted by ancient enemies.
Such is Professor Rawley’s contentious position in the epilogue to his seminal study of “Bleeding Kansas,” (p.272). Written in the 1960s, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and an ongoing war in Vietnam, Rawley wrote as one of the new “revisionist” historians applying new prisms to old stories. What he found was – as with all “new” discoveries – actually right there in front and plain view all along. His main theme is that racialism has been the founding theme of American society from the inception; that the only real sectional differences in the US – peopled largely by persons of the same Anglo-Celtic-Teutonic stock – was the concentration of blacks in one region; their existence allowed in the south only because they were slaves, and feared in the north as a spreading social “menace.” The Republican Party was not founded by John Brown-like abolitionists, but for the benefit of the white northern majority who feared the likes of John Brown. The “good intentions” projected onto it by idealistic historians was, like southern revisionism, a face-saving construct of later years.
Having seen much of the same evidence Rawley marshals I can’t say I disagree with him, though at first he seems to pursue a reductionism similar to the political and economic historians he critiques. (Also becoming somewhat repetitious in stating his own case.) By viewing the color bar, not the Mason-Dixon Line or capitalism vs. slavery, as the source of the “irrepressible conflict” he ironically echoes D. W. Griffith in the pro-Klan film “Birth of a Nation,” blaming disunity on the presence of “the African.” Yet race as an historical causative factor seemed so explosive precisely because of its general avoidance: a topic too passionate for “professional discussion” in public, except in carefully-prescribed settings; or too discomforting for “polite company” in private. So too in academia, Rawley contended, causing historians to blame the cause of war on slavery while avoiding the identity of the enslaved.
There were other “threats to democracy” in the era, many of which are still with us: the “entitlements” of class and property; sexism, nativism, militarism, religious dogma. In truth, there is no separating racism, exploitation, or imperial expansion. Rawley states that slavery was justified by limiting it to Africans, who could be reduced by law to semi-human status because of their race. I’ve found it also nullified the “threat of democracy” in colonial Virginia by Bacon’s Rebellion and the English Bill of Rights of 1688 (slavery first “expanded” ca. 1690 – surprise!) Rawley’s book shows that the 19th century’s civil war began not at Bull Run, nor ended at Appamatox; but was a full era that originated in the bloody plains of Kansas in the mid-1850s, and didn’t end until the close of Reconstruction twenty years later.
In Rawley’s book it’s seen that democracy for the white majority came at the expense of a vulnerable racial underclass, whose very presence became a feared threat to democracy and social unity, not just jobs and land. Much the same can be said for modern corporate “persons” also owned by an entitled caste. The American “political genius” has yet to find a way out of a fiendishly clever trap plotted by ancient enemies.
January 7, 2020
The author tacks the position that it was race as opposed to slavery that caused the problems in Kanas from 1854-1858. He does a good job of going explaining all the events of this period both in Kansas and in the rest of the country. His position is that even the Northerners were not against slavery as much as against non-whites coming there to compete with white labor. While this can certainly be one reason for the the troubles, there certainly are more that added to the intensity of it. I found the book to be informative and well-written.
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August 12, 2009Race & Politics "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War by James A. Rawley (1969)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews