Reviews
"Hettle distinguishes his study from other fine analyses of mid-nineteenth-century Southern politics by extending his exploration. Hettle believes it is a mistake to conclude such a discussion with the secession crisis, a high-water mark of white solidarity. Instead, he pursues the answer to the question of how democratic the region's Democratic Party was into the war years . . . The Peculiar Democracy was written for specialists. But, the clarity of Hettle's argument and the quality of his prose make his book more than accessible for the interested general reader."
—History: Reviews of New Books
Description
The Peculiar Democracy analyzes antebellum politics in terms of the connections between slavery, manhood, and the legacies of Jefferson and Jackson. It then looks at the secession crisis through the anxieties felt by Democratic politicians who claimed concern for the interests of both slaveholders and nonslaveholders. At the heart of the book is a collective biography of five individuals whose stories highlight the limitations of democratic political culture in a society dominated by the "peculiar institution." Through narratives informed by recent scholarship on gender, honor, class, and the law, Hettle profiles South Carolina's Francis W. Pickens, Georgia's Joseph Brown, Alabama's Jeremiah Clemens, Virginia's John Rutherfoord, and Mississippi's Jefferson Davis.
The Civil War stories presented in The Peculiar Democracy illuminate the political and sometimes personal tragedy of men torn between a political culture based on egalitarian rhetoric and the wartime imperatives to defend slavery.
