Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography ; v. 140, no. 2
Summary
Abstract: Partisan relationships have always been fundamental to American politics. In antebellum Pennsylvania the personal and political partnership of Democrats James Buchanan and Jehu Glancy Jones was absolutely critical to state and national events. While much scholarship exists on Buchanan, few historians have examined the life of Jones, a man of undeniable importance to Buchanan's rise to the presidency, the passage of now-infamous antebellum legislation, and the fracturing of the Democratic Party. By studying Jones's career, we can better appreciate the role of political underlings, dispel myths about the motives and principles of antebellum Democrats, and clarify the links between state and national politics.
Part 1. A growing rivalry between the North and South, 1846-1854. The Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, and the election of 1848 ; The Compromise of 1850 ; The fugitive slave controversy, the election of 1852, and growing sectionalism -- Part 2. Southern successes, Northern anxieties, 1854-1857. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, bleeding Kansas, and the Republican Party ; The elction of 1856 and its aftermath -- Part 3. The Union comes apart, 1857-1861. Dred Scott, Kansas, and the events of 1858 ; John Brown's raid, party conventions, the election of 1860, and secession.
Summary
Voices from the Gathering Storm explains the dramatic change in thinking about the nature and value of the American Union from 1846 to1861 which impelled citizens from 11 southern states to declare independence and the remaining 22 states to fight the bloodiest war in the nation's history. This reader tells the story of seventeen Northerners and Southerners who lived through the critical fifteen years prior to the Civil War. In their letters and diaries, they describe in their own words what it was like to live during the sectional crisis and the coming of the war. [from the publisher]
