The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War by J. Matthew Gallman (review)

Reviewed by: The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War by J. Matthew Gallman Erik B. Alexander (bio) The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War. By J. Matthew Gallman. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021. Pp. 416. Cloth, 35. 00. ) Over the last twenty years, scholarly interest in northern Democrats has undergone something of a revival. There has been a thorough reappraisal of the role they played in the politics of the sectional conflict and the Civil End Page 125 War, as historians have revised the longtime caricature of Democrats as a fringe party devoid of principle and out of step with the mainstream of the northern public. That reassessment, however, has produced somewhat opposing views of the party among historians of Civil War politics. Some scholars emphasize the extremes of the party's peace wing, arguing that Copperheads represented a genuine threat to the success of the Union war effort, while others instead highlight northern Democrats' role as the loyal opposition. Against this backdrop, J. Matthew Gallman has attempted to offer the most complete portrait in a generation of who the wartime Democrats in the North were and what they believed. Gallman, however, intentionally eschews any historiographical infighting, explaining at the outset that he is "not attempting historiographic interventions here" (10). This is in part because he emphasizes the complexities and fluidity of wartime politics, avoiding such labels as "Peace Democrats" and "War Democrats, " which other historians have long used. As Gallman points out, "That sort of binary language is certainly useful to understand the Democratic Party: some people supported the war, and others opposed it. But the labels mask complexities. People—both citizens and politicians—fell along a spectrum, and their positions on that spectrum were not fixed" (175). Instead, Gallman paints his canvas with a very broad brush, and The Cacophony of Politics is as much a portrait of wartime opposition to the Lincoln administration writ large as it is a history of the Democratic Party as a political organization. To be sure, there are plenty of wire-pullers and politicos here, as well as analysis of the ups and downs and ins and outs of the party's electoral fortunes. But Gallman's account of northern Democrats is really "a book about those men and women who did not see eye to eye with Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, at least for part of the Civil War" (9). This approach allows Gallman to incorporate a much wider cast of characters, especially the welcome inclusion of the perspectives of numerous white women who regularly discussed, thought, and wrote about politics during the war. The Cacophony of Politics is mostly organized thematically, though it proceeds chronologically. Three different sections and nine chapters alternate between discussions of the Democratic Party's more formal organized activities and what Gallman terms "politics in the streets. " Throughout the book, Gallman returns to several key questions, including the importance of political labels and who the Democrats were, what constituted political activity and opposition during wartime, and many of the classic topics of Civil War politics, ranging from civil liberties to slavery and race. Though The Cacophony of Politics provides in-depth discussions of the End Page 126 war's major political events, the book is really a series of smaller vignettes through which Gallman tries to evoke what the lived experiences of northern Democrats were like during the war. Gallman's background as one of the best social historians of the Civil War is reflected in the book's strengths; at the same time, his analysis of elections and partisan activities does not provide much that hard-core political historians do not already know. That is not to take away from the book's contribution. Gallman's emphasis on the nuances and complexities of Democratic thought is a welcome addition to the growing body of work on northern Democrats during the Civil War era, echoing many of the insights of Mark E. Neely Jr. 's recent Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War (2017). Like Neely's Democrats, Gallman's were not just shrill peace men and women or extreme. . .