Holt, affirms that the wealthiest slaveholding plantation districts were Whig bastions, not Democratic.Īctually, the most visible Whigs-Clay, Webster, Taylor, and the like-were notable straddlers, not bold reformers, on divisive issues like slavery. The leading current authority on Whig politics, Michael F. The slaveholder Clay, whom black abolitionists despised, called free blacks “the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned” people in America. White supremacy, sadly, permeated both parties. Howe garbles the politics of slavery and race. But Howe turns a complicated, unfolding national tragedy into a crude racial melodrama, featuring Whig heroes and Jacksonian villains. Yet how does Howe explain Henry Clay’s assertion that the Indians were “destined to extinction” and “not,…as a race, worth preserving” (a claim that Howe’s greatest hero, John Quincy Adams, said had “too much foundation”)? True, Clay later changed, when politically advantageous.
There is no defending the outcome of Jackson’s Indian policies (though we could debate Jackson’s motivations, which Howe describes as, in effect, genocidal). But as my book shows, the Jacksonians did not have a corner on white supremacy. He demonizes the Democrats and caricatures Andrew Jackson as an illiberal, autocratic white supremacist. Instead, he claims that the Whigs were the true heroes. and Sean Wilentz, who describe the Jacksonians as major proponents of democratic reform. He aims to dismantle the work of diverse historians, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Howe wants to rehabilitate the Whig Party as the outstanding force for liberal politics and technological progress of the time. But let’s focus instead on larger, more substantive issues. I know Millard Fillmore was a Whig-my book simply ends two years before Fillmore took office.
Disagreement with England did contribute to the Monroe Doctrine. My book doesn’t equate the Liberty and Free Soil parties. I would relish the space to discuss every false allegation Howe raises.
In his smugly dismissive review of Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson, Daniel Walker Howe uses a smokescreen of cavils to avoid confronting my book’s conclusions, which clash with his recent book, What Hath God Wrought.
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