Review: A Hell Of A Storm

AHell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Comingof the Civil War

By David S. Brown

With the passage of “An Act to suppress the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia,” on September 20, 1850, the fight for and against slavery seemed to be over. It was the final puzzle piece to be fitted into the Compromise of 1850, with its sister acts finalizing the Texas border, California statehood, establishing a territorial government for Utah, and a stricter Fugitive Slave Act. The debate over slavery still raged, but the United States settled into an uneasy peace. That is until January 4,1854 when Senator Stephen A. Douglas reported his Kansas-Nebraska bill to the main body of the United States Senate. Stephens’ bill sought to overturn the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and established the idea “popular sovereignty” assigning each new territory the power to decide by a vote of its residents to enter the Union either as a slave state or a free state. After months of debates, the bill was passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and signed into law on May 30, 1854 by President Franklin Pierce.

David S. Brown explores how the Kansas-Nebraska Act unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War in his book “A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, The End Of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War.” Though the subtitle of this book implies a focus on the Kansas-Nebraska act and the events in “Bleeding Kansas,” the narrative does not. The author himself states in interviews that he had always wanted to write something on Henry David Thoreau and the publication of “Walden” in 1854. That same year George Fitzhugh, published his most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society, “Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society.” In it Fitzhugh was critical of the industrial north & argues for a return to agrarianism as it existed in the South. Taken together with the “Walden,” “Sociology for the South” and the Kansas-Nebraska Act form the framework of Brown’s narrative.

“A Hell of a Storm” often tangentially strays away from the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bloody Kansas, instead in Brown’s narrative the Kansas-Nebraska Act functions like a stone thrown into the middle Walden Pond and its outward rippling effects.

Among others featured in Brown’s book are Stephen A. Douglas, the “doughfaced” Senator from Illinois and the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his rival both in love and politics, Abraham Lincoln who would go on to be the 16th President of the United States; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century; the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriet Beecher Stowe; William Walker, the filibusterer who organized unauthorized military expeditions into Mexico and Central America with the intention of establishing colonies where slavery could flourish; Senator Henry Clay from Kentucky, the “Great Compromiser,” who introduced the failed omnibus bill which Stephen Douglas broke up the bill into its individual parts which were passed by Congress one bill at a time, making the Comprise of 1850; Salmon P. Chase who would go on to become the 23rd Governor of Ohio, United States Senator from Ohio, 25th United States Secretary of the Treasury during the Lincoln Administration, and the 6th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; Horace Greeley, the neck bearded founder and editor of the New York Tribune; Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia whose capture and trial in Boston, and transport back to Virginia, generated wide-scale public outrage in the North and increased support for abolition;  Sojourner Truth; there is a whole chapter dedicated to Martin Delany, who staunchly advocated  African Americans to leave the United States to settle in Central or South America as he feared racism would trump everything in America; Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, wife of founding father Alexander Hamilton who died in 1854; Harriet Tubman; John Brown; Alvan E. Bovay, one of the founders of the Republican Party; who led the crusade to ensure that the Kansas Territory would enter into the United States as a free state; and United States Congressman and abolitionist Joshua R. Giddings.

Given its slightly misleading subtitle I still would absolutely recommend “A Hell of a Storm” to those interested in the antebellum era. It is extremely well researched and written in an easily read narrative.

ISBN 978-1668022818, Scribner, © 2024, Hardcover, 352 pages, Photographs, End Notes & Index. $32.00. To purchase this book click HERE.

Review: Kidnapped at Sea

Kidnappedat Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry

by Andrew Sillen

There are things we know, things we don’t know and things we don’t know that we don’t know. We will never know the experience of David Henry Wight, an illiterate, free, Black, teenaged sailor from Lewes, Delaware, who on October 9, 1862 was kidnapped from the Philadelphia-based packet ship Tonawanda by Raphael Semmes, Captain of the Confederate raider CSS Alabama upon which White was enslaved until he perished during its duel with the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Cherbourg, France on June 19, 1864.

David Henry White left few written records to document his short time on Earth. And yet Dr. Andrew Sillen, a visiting research scholar in the department of anthropology at Rutgers University, has written an unconventional biography of White. Much like Sebastian Junger was able to tell the story of the Andrea Gail in his book “The Perfect Storm,” Sillen too, tells the story of David Henry White, not by his own narrative, but by the narratives of those around him, and thus by piecing together their narratives he is able to create a narrative of White’s life by the preponderance of evidence, even without a personal narrative viewpoint.

By comparing and contrasting differing narrative views, Sillen disposes of false narratives put forth by Raphel Semmes and other secondary sources who claimed that White was a contented slave, and creates a solid narrative that flows from White’s humble beginnings to his untimely death.

“Kidnapped At Sea” is well researched and well written in an easily readable style. I would highly recommend it for students of the American Civil War, slavery and maritime history.

ISBN 978-1421449517, Johns Hopkins University Press, © 2024, Hardcover, 352 pages, Photographs, Maps, Illustrations, Tables, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $32.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

Review: The North Star

The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln

by Julian Sher

When most people think about Canada’s participation in the American Civil War they naturally conclude that America’s northern neighbor served as a haven for fugitive slaves and nothing else. The truth is a much more complicated and nuanced story; Canadians either directly or indirectly participated on both sides of the conflict.

Award-winning journalist and author Julian Sher relates the true history of the Canadian involvement in the war the tore the United States apart in his book “The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against the Union.

Among those covered in “The North Star” are: George Taylor Denison III, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the Confederate cause who bankrolled Confederate operations and opened his mansion to their agents; Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first Black Canadian to be licensed as a physician who joined the Union Army; Sarah Emma Edmonds, a New Brunswick woman who disguised herself as a man named Franklin Flint Thompson and enlisted in Company F of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and served with the Union Army as a field nurse and later a spy who travelled into enemy territory to gather information, requiring her to come up with many disguises; and Edward P. Doherty who formed and led the detachment of soldiers that captured and killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

“The North Star” is well researched and written, Sher’s narrative is easily read and engaging and highlights many aspects Canadian participation in the American Civil War of which many Americans and Canadians remain simply ignorant.

ISBN 978-1039000292, Knopf Canada, © 2023, Hardcover, 480 pages, Photographs, Sources and End Notes, & Index. $28.00. To purchase this book click HERE.