Volume 17, Number 4 · September 23, 1971
Paranoia and American History
By William W. Freehling
The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style
by David Brion Davis
Louisiana State University Press, 97 pp., $4.00
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
by Eric Foner
Oxford, 353 pp., $2.75 (paper)
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
by David Donald
Knopf, 392 pp., $8.95
Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man
by David Donald
Knopf, 595 pp., $15.00
How does one account for America's sometimes violent past political divisions? Few historians now accept Charles Beard's view, popular earlier in the century, that a continual struggle between rich and poor explains American strife. Much of the best historical work since the Second World War has undermined Beard's claims. But as the criticism has proceeded, no convincing alternative to Beard's theory has emerged. Years ago, a few 'consensus' historians sought to turn Beard upside down. They urged that American history is a story of unity, not of conflict; of shared values, not of social warfare. Their influence, while great in the 1950s, now seems to be waning. The consensus view does not square, among other things, with the fact of two savage internal wars between 1776 and 1866.
Review, 3226 words
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