Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War
Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War by Douglas R. Egerton
In early 1860, pundits across America confidently predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, after all, led the only party that bridged North and South. But the Democrats would split over the issue ofslavery, leading Southerners in the party to run their own presidential slate. This opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low 39.8 percent of the popular vote.
Acclaimed scholar Douglas R. Egerton chronicles the contest with a historian's keen insight and a veteran political reporter's eye for detail. Vividly, Egerton re-creates the cascade of unforeseen events that confounded political bosses, set North and South on the road to disunion, and put not Stephen Douglas, but his greatest rival, in the White House.
We see Lincoln and his team outmaneuvering more prominent Republicans, like New York's grandiose William Seward, while Democratic conventions collapse in confusion. And we see the gifted, flawed Douglas marking his finest hour in defeat, as he strives, and fails, to save the Union. Year of Meteors delivers a teeming cast of characters, minor and major, and a breakneck narrative of this most momentous year in American history.
In the first week of November the New York Public Library emailed their newsletter that had a list of history books about past elections in the U.S.A.
While I don't read history books, they usually don't hold my attention, I wanted to learn more about American history in these... uncertain times.
So I put a bunch of the books the NYPL suggested on hold for their grab-n-go service. Year of Meteors was the first to become available.
It's 340 pages and it did take me a month to read. There are a lot of details. I ended up taking notes to keep track.
It really gets into the division with in the Democratic Party. So much so that they split their conventions. Stephen Douglas was the Northern Democratic nominee and VP Breckinridge was the Southern Democratic nominee. Obviously Lincoln was the Republican nominee but I did realized that there were more candidates running in the 1860 election.
Like I said there were so many details. The book talks about the issues of the day: slavery being a big one but also expanding slavery into the Western Territories. The Southern fire-eaters wanted to reopen the Atlantic slave trade, which is just morally insane. The fire-eaters are just a morally bankrupt bunch. They purposely wanted a Republican to win to invoke the South to secede.
The book gets into the details of how conventions were conducted, how nominees were chosen (I didn't know that delegates first voted on a platform and then voted on Presidential and VP candidates), and how differently campaigns were run.
It gets really into the details of each candidates electoral counts and popular votes. I had to make a list to keep it straight. Also, people voted very differently back then. You had to obtain a ticket with the party's nominees on it and then drop it in the candidate's box. So no voter privacy, everyone could see who you voted for.
Once Lincoln is declared the winner we learn how he chose his cabinet members.
But the subtitle of the book is theElection that Brought on the Civil War, and so it gets into the states that seceded and what they did to pick their own president, vp, and cabinet members. But then gets into the conventions they had to try and negotiate peace to keep the Union together. Which proved to be a waste of time because those fire-eaters are just trouble makers.
So although this was a bit tough to get through and it could be dry at times, I really learned so much about the division in America at that time (more than I ever learned in school.) I also realized that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Maybe some day I'll read a book about the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. They really just gloss over that in school.
4 out of 5 Electoral Votes.
In early 1860, pundits across America confidently predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, after all, led the only party that bridged North and South. But the Democrats would split over the issue ofslavery, leading Southerners in the party to run their own presidential slate. This opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low 39.8 percent of the popular vote.
Acclaimed scholar Douglas R. Egerton chronicles the contest with a historian's keen insight and a veteran political reporter's eye for detail. Vividly, Egerton re-creates the cascade of unforeseen events that confounded political bosses, set North and South on the road to disunion, and put not Stephen Douglas, but his greatest rival, in the White House.
We see Lincoln and his team outmaneuvering more prominent Republicans, like New York's grandiose William Seward, while Democratic conventions collapse in confusion. And we see the gifted, flawed Douglas marking his finest hour in defeat, as he strives, and fails, to save the Union. Year of Meteors delivers a teeming cast of characters, minor and major, and a breakneck narrative of this most momentous year in American history.
In the first week of November the New York Public Library emailed their newsletter that had a list of history books about past elections in the U.S.A.
While I don't read history books, they usually don't hold my attention, I wanted to learn more about American history in these... uncertain times.
So I put a bunch of the books the NYPL suggested on hold for their grab-n-go service. Year of Meteors was the first to become available.
It's 340 pages and it did take me a month to read. There are a lot of details. I ended up taking notes to keep track.
It really gets into the division with in the Democratic Party. So much so that they split their conventions. Stephen Douglas was the Northern Democratic nominee and VP Breckinridge was the Southern Democratic nominee. Obviously Lincoln was the Republican nominee but I did realized that there were more candidates running in the 1860 election.
Like I said there were so many details. The book talks about the issues of the day: slavery being a big one but also expanding slavery into the Western Territories. The Southern fire-eaters wanted to reopen the Atlantic slave trade, which is just morally insane. The fire-eaters are just a morally bankrupt bunch. They purposely wanted a Republican to win to invoke the South to secede.
The book gets into the details of how conventions were conducted, how nominees were chosen (I didn't know that delegates first voted on a platform and then voted on Presidential and VP candidates), and how differently campaigns were run.
It gets really into the details of each candidates electoral counts and popular votes. I had to make a list to keep it straight. Also, people voted very differently back then. You had to obtain a ticket with the party's nominees on it and then drop it in the candidate's box. So no voter privacy, everyone could see who you voted for.
Once Lincoln is declared the winner we learn how he chose his cabinet members.
But the subtitle of the book is theElection that Brought on the Civil War, and so it gets into the states that seceded and what they did to pick their own president, vp, and cabinet members. But then gets into the conventions they had to try and negotiate peace to keep the Union together. Which proved to be a waste of time because those fire-eaters are just trouble makers.
So although this was a bit tough to get through and it could be dry at times, I really learned so much about the division in America at that time (more than I ever learned in school.) I also realized that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Maybe some day I'll read a book about the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. They really just gloss over that in school.
4 out of 5 Electoral Votes.