The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War

Abstract

This excellent book begins by emphasizing the usefulness of studying past societies by investigating their leaders' views on political economy.This research method leads not to the determinism of pure economics nor to a purely legalistic or idealistic view of politics, but to the unraveling of a society's material interests, how those interests then shaped expectations of future activity, and how they entered into political calculations about how a society could be best served.Using the four cotton states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as the focus of his study, Brian Schoen has done a superb job of joining together the local pursuit of profit with leaders' attitudes toward slavery, liberalism, free trade, and the federal Union.He then extends the analysis a further notch by placing his study in a transatlantic perspective--how the political economy ideals of the main actors of these cotton states played out in the international realm.The overarching interpretation he offers is a rebuttal to historians writing in the vein of "Progressivism, classical Marxism, and dependency theory" who have depicted a South caught in the trap of a decaying social system, a tyrannical and inhospitable geography, and a ruinous anti-modernism (3).Rather, Schoen's portrayal of the Cotton South emphasizes capitalist change, entrepreneurship, calculation, an embrace of science and technology, a full allegiance to the principles of European liberalism, and overweening confidence about the future of cotton and slavery.Though Schoen's interpretation may have some exaggerations and omissions, it is a bravura performance destined to play a leading role in reshaping historical understanding of the Old South.

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