A Nation Forged By Crisis: A New American History, Sexton - A*

                     This book looks at our nation through a global prism, positing that it has been the impact of events beyond our shores that have crafted the US, as much as, if not more than our internal evolutions. The focus of this book is on the Revolution, the Civil War and the era of FDR's presidency.

                    "That thirteen of Britain's North American colonies came to seek their independence was the unexpected result of a volatile international environment." Our independence occurred in the middle of Britain and France's century-long struggle that ended at Waterloo. The middle years of the 18th century also saw a vast wave of migration to the colonies that stressed the existing governance structures. Scots, Ulstermen, Germans and Africans came in significant numbers. Trade and investment ballooned. The Revolution was less a rebellion, and more a civil war about how to manage the growing colonies. After victory in 1763, "...Britain had neither the means nor the will to project its authority in the interior of North America." Asking the colonists to help pay for the recently concluded war was a total failure. Paine's 'Common Sense', which made "the most influential case for the independence of the colonies was less the culmination of some distinctly American political tradition than it was the unanticipated product of the growth and integration of the British Atlantic system."   

                        The war in America was internationalized by France, which was prompted by the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga and the drafting of the Articles of Confederation. Foreign military and financial assistance provided the US with victory and independence. As the 1780's saw a disintegration of American coherence, and the British from the north and the Spanish from the south threatened their independence, the Americans came together at the Constitutional Convention to solidify the nations institutions. They built a system that could hold off centralized domestic tyranny, but that was strong enough to "compete with the monarchial-fiscal states" of Europe. The companion piece, the Northwest Ordinance, "harnessed westward migration on behalf of national interests." Ultimately, the disunion of America and Britain benefited both parties. The UK financed America's expansion and provided innumerable immigrants to the new land. The US became its greatest trading partner. The flaw in the new American establishment, slavery, would eventually push the system to the brink. 

                      The crisis over slavery had domestic and global causes. In the late 18th century, slavery was fading in America. Two generations later, it dramatically increased because of the UK's insatiable hunger for cotton. Over half a century, cotton production grew from 3,000 to 4,000,000 bales per year. By the time of the Civil War, there were 4 million slaves in the South, up from substantially less than a million in 1789. While slavery flourished in the US, it was declining around the world. Britain abolished it in 1833 and most states in Latin America did as well. Its existence in the US became a hot-button issue in the 1830's.  In the US, religions, families, states, and institutions all began to fragment over the issue. When Mexico was dispatched, it was evident that the Union would do more than survive. No longer were the British a geopolitical threat. Once we became masters of the continent in the 1850's, how we would handle the potential westward expansion of slavery became the paramount issue.  Further complicating matters was  the massive German and Irish immigration of that decade.  Religious and ethnic animosities were added to the cauldron of domestic politics and helped wreck the Whig party and divide the Democrats. Into this mix strode Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, whose electoral victory led to secession.

                   The Civil War took place in the midst of international transitions around the globe and is "notable for what did not happen - foreign intervention." The war disrupted the movement of people, capital, and cotton across the Atlantic. The UK declined to intervene, concluding that the risks outweighed the rewards.  To find raw cotton, it turned to Egypt and India. They also backed away financially and the North funded the war primarily through war bonds sold throughout the country. During the war, immigrants flocked to the North. Eight hundred thousand  arrived, and fully a quarter of the Union army were born elsewhere. Union victory stabilized the world's great emerging market and propelled it to finish colonizing the west and eventually, the US turned its ambitions overseas. "By stabilizing the politics of the US, the outcome of 1865 ignited a surge of immigration and foreign investment that would enhance the population, economy and power of the nation. The US would not realize its potential world power until it was rustled into a period of further innovation during a new crisis..."

                    The great crises of the mid-20th century were whipsawed by America's "volatile and inconsistent" policies. We alternated between isolation and engagement, "economic nationalism and international initiative", nearly unfettered immigration and a closed door. We avoided Europe, engaged in a European war and stepped away again. We reduced annual immigration to 7,000 by 1930 from a million before the war. We swung from being the world's greatest debtor to largest creditor.  All of these shifts took place in and around the First World War. Our economic power stemmed from our upward path, while Europe destroyed itself.  "The First World War... accelerated  the international rise of the United States."  After the crash of Wall Street, we initiated an era of high tariffs that cut world trade by 90%. FDR's policies may have been drawn from foreign models, but his focus was domestic. Most Americans did not wish to be involved overseas. Those with Irish and German backgrounds disliked the British and their empire.  Only between 1938 and 1941 did the tide begin to turn. Roosevelt began to speak of our 'national security'. The outbreak of war led the US to cast its power into all corners of the world. The rest of the world was brought to its knees and we prospered like never before. "The war unleashed the most productive industrial economy the world has ever seen." At war's end, we assumed responsibility for the worlds economic well-being as well as assuring its security arrangements. Our "global commitments had no parallel in world history." "The peculiar postwar form the new American superpower took...was as much the creation of its zigzagging course through this era of international crisis as it was the culmination of long-standing policies and political ideas." The wild swings were "smoothed out into a more linear and coherent course after 1945 - so much so that Americans came to imagine their history as one that had inexorably unfolded toward their global ascendance."

                     The crises of the 21st century have thrown into disarray the idea of America forever on a seamless upward trajectory. In the past, transformative change tackled the problems of each era of crisis. There were also significant foreign factors in the creation of each problem and its resolution. We clearly have not adapted to the era of post-Cold War globalization. So far, the pillars of American democracy and capitalism have held. It appears though that "stormier waters lie ahead." "As we navigate our way through" the next great crisis, "whenever it may be, we would be well served to remember something that American history teaches us: the more we look outward, the more prepared we'll be."

Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas, Haley - B

                    Putnam receives a letter directing him to New Orleans to await further orders.  He receives a secret directive to command a ship for Texas in its 1836 revolution against Mexico. Under no circumstance is it to be acknowledged that he is an American naval officer acting on orders. His second-in-command is a former colleague, and they are instrumental in stopping a ship carrying canons to Santa Anna. Throughout the novel, Putnam is sidelined for days at a time with malaria, but makes it home to Connecticut.  As a reward, President Jackson offers him any post he wishes, but he pens a letter to the Navy Secretary resigning his commission. My suspicion is that he will go back to sea.  This series appears to have been very accurate historically, but a cursory inquiry indicates that arming a navy for Texas was not something the US undertook. But maybe that's the point of Jackson advising him to never tell a soul.

In The Dark, Freeman - B+

                     Stride, and just about everyone else in Duluth, is not happy when a woman who had graduated from high school in 1977 returns to town. She intends to write a book about the death of a fellow classmate who was murdered on July 4th that summer and whose death is an open cold case. Revisiting the past brings back pain for many, including Jonathan, the town's leading lawyer, and the friends of the late Laura Starr. Once again, this series delivers an intriguing page-turner.

Transient Desires, Leon - B+

                     Yet, another quality entry in a long-running series. Guido and Griffoni investigate an accident on the 'laguna' at night and they delve deeper and deeper into more than the usual crimes and misdemeanors. They seek help from the coast guard as they face an international smuggling operation. Additionally, as the author has done for decades, the tale explores changes in Venice and as a bonus, provides some insight into Griffoni's home, Naples. A pleasure.

Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election, Kendrick and Kendrick, B

     These events took place in October, 1960. The imprisonment of the 31-year old King and the response of the Kennedys, particularly three of their campaign staffers, had a profound effect on the election and the ensuing decades.                                        Harrison Wofford, along with his boss, Sargent Shriver, had been tasked with liaising with the Negro community. Forty percent of Blacks had voted for Ike, and Nixon had a better reputation on civil rights than Kennedy. Shriver's team was known as the Civil Rights Section, or CRS. They were assisted by a Black Chicago newspaperman, Louis Martin. King came from middle-class Atlanta, a staunch Republican community, and in light of Nixon's reaching out to him, was inclined to believe in the VP. The catalyst for King's time in jail came from a Morehouse student leader, Lonnie King, who had targeted Rich's department store, the most famous in Atlanta. He planned a sit-in at their lunch counter and kept encouraging Martin L. King to join the students. On Oct. 19, King and others were arrested at Rich's. Nineteen women and seventeen men refused bail and were sent to the Fulton County Jail. Although he had been arrested before, it was King's first night in jail.                                                                                                                   As national attention focused on Atlanta, its mayor, William Hartsfield, sprang into action. He brokered a deal to have everyone released from jail and negotiated a truce that would eventually desegregate the stores. To do so, he said that Sen. Kennedy had been in touch, even though it was only Wofford who had called, and he had done so of his own volition. When word of the Kennedy campaign's involvement spread, those in the Republican party seeking the Black vote encouraged Nixon to chime in.                                                                                                                                    As matters in Fulton County were heading toward resolution, an unforeseen problem in neighboring DeKalb County arose. King had a suspended sentence there for driving with an Alabama license while a Georgia resident, and the local judge felt that his actions at Rich's violated the terms of his probation. When the students were freed, King was sent alone to DeKalb. He faced a hearing in a packed court house and, at day's end, the judge revoked his probation and sentenced him to four months in a work gang. The next morning at 3 am, King was awakened, shackled, and driven three hours to the notorious state prison at Reidsville. That same morning, JFK called Georgia Governor Vandiver and asked if he could get King out of jail.  Sargent Shriver also convinced Jack to call Coretta King and, in a minute-and-a-half conversation, Sen. Kennedy expressed his concerns to Mrs. King.                                                                                                                       The following day, Bobby Kennedy called the supervising judge, who had an appeal of the license conviction before him. He decided to grant the appeal and allow King to post bond. The judge mentioned the call and King acknowledged the help from the Kennedys when he was released saying "I hold the Senator in very high esteem..." Wofford, Martin and Shriver decided they had to capitalize on the story and had 3 million pamphlets printed praising Kennedy and lambasting Nixon. The CRS team had those pamphlets distributed at Black churches in the South and Midwest.                                                                                                                                     The election was close. It was the last time an election was fought in every section of the country. Eighteen states were decided by three points, or less. In Georgia, there was a foreshadowing of future trends. DeKalb voted Republican and  Blacks in the state started to turn to the Democrats. Nationally, the Black vote helped Kennedy by increasing from 61% in 1956 for Stevenson to 68% for JFK. Nixon felt he had lost the election because of his actions during the King crisis. When Theodore White published his groundbreaking 'The Making of the President, 1960', he attributed the Black vote in eleven states as decisive.                                                                                                                      "The arrest of King is not only the fulcrum on which the 1960 election pivoted but the dividing line between between the moderate vice president and the president who reshaped a political order that divides us still. Nixon's intuitive genius for exploiting racial divisions, born in the final stretch of the 1960 election, maintains its hold over us. By way of his 'southern strategy' Nixon took Americas's explicit rhetoric of racism and smoothed down its rough edges so that the Republican party...could turn the solid Democratic South red in 1972 and keep it that way for decades."

The Power Couple, Berenson - B +

                       A woman very high up in the FBI and her husband, with the NSA, take a trip to Barcelona, where their college-age daughter is kidnapped. The plot has a complexity and a series of twists and turns that shock, surprise and confound. This is a fun read by a master of the genre.

Blood Alone, Benn -C

                    The third novel in this series falls flat. It's set in Sicily and Lt. Boyle is tasked to get a message to the local Don from Ike with the blessings of Lucky Luciano. Although in prison, Luciano assisted the Office of Naval Intelligence to help US forces invading the island. He also helped keep the labor peace on the NY docks. He was released from jail in 1946 and deported to Italy. When he died in 1962, his remains were returned to NY for internment in Queens.

Confessions On The 7:45, Unger - B+

                     This is a fabulous thriller where the layers of complexity keep unfolding and revealing more and more intrigue. The starting point is a woman, mother of two, sitting in her office in Manhattan watching her nanny on top of her husband on the 'nanny cam' she recently installed. For reasons she can't quite fathom, she mentions this to a complete stranger on the train to the suburbs. From that point on, all the wheels come off. 

Calhoun: American Heretic, Elder - B +

                  "Fame and infamy attached themselves to Calhoun early in his life and have persisted since his death in 1850." He was born in 1782 to a Scotch-Irish family from Ulster in the Carolina backcountry. His father had arrived there in the 1750's, and by the end of the war in 1783, he owned 16 slaves and 2100 acres of land. Patrick Calhoun taught his son to despise Britain, and to believe in individual liberty and limited government. He received a classical education at his brother-in-law's academy before enrolling at Yale. He was already a Jeffersonian when he reached Connecticut. He  found himself in a very Federalist environment, one critical of chattel slavery. He studied law at a private school in Litchfield, returned to South Carolina to read the law in 1806, and opened his own office in his home county of Abbeville after passing the bar. After the invention of the cotton gin, all of South Carolina, including what was now known as the upcountry, experienced a boom that united the state economically, and confirmed its reliance on slave labor. He was elected to the state legislature in 1808 and the US Congress in 1810. The following year, he married a wealthy cousin, Floride Colhoun. Once in Washington, he very quickly came to everyone's attention with his analytical and articulate exposition  of the need to prepare for war with the UK. Although there were trade issues between the two countries, it was Britain's continuing impressment of naturalized American citizens that rankled the most. He was the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee when war was declared in the spring of 1812. Although the war and its concluding treaty were, at best, a draw, Jackson's victory at New Orleans led many to consider it a triumph over the British. 

                  In the post-war era, Jeffersonian orthodoxies about the fear of standing armies and centralized government were shunted aside as the nation looked to expand, grow and dominate the continent. After championing bills to advance the nation, Calhoun left Congress and accepted Monroe's offer to be Sect. of War. He modernized and efficiently managed the government's largest department. He navigated through Andrew Jackson's unauthorized attack on the Spanish in Florida and a major recession in the 1820's. During the debates over the Missouri Compromise, Calhoun mused to his good friend and colleague, John Quincy Adams, that the law protected property rights and for he and other slaveowners, their slaves were their property. He also acknowledged the potential for the controversy over the extension of slavery to the west to sunder the union. He aspired to higher office and "as 1824 approached, there were few figures on the national stage who could legitimately claim to have a larger hand in the progress and prospects of American civilization than Secretary of War Calhoun." He won the Vice Presidency in an electoral landslide, while Adams eked out a victory in Congress, over Jackson. Long a nationalist, he began to fear the growing power of the North and started to think about a state's right to veto federal action. A tariff that favored the North and that he believed would impoverish the South moved him further away from the center. He suggested that state conventions, not legislatures, could 'nullify' federal laws detrimental to their state, and that that action could lead to necessary amendments to the Constitution. "While other states' rights advocates saw only a choice between domination by the federal government or disunion, Calhoun worked creatively, almost desperately, to find the resources for a solution within the system itself." 

                       1828 saw Calhoun returned as VP, with Andrew Jackson the new president. At the annual party celebrating Jefferson's birthday in 1830, the most famous exchange of toasts in American history took place. The President offered, "Our union, it must be preserved." Calhoun's reply included, "may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States..." Soon thereafter, and particularly at the encouragement of Sec. of State Van Buren, Jackson broke with Calhoun. A national debate on nullification, or interposition, propelled by continuing tariff contretemps,  saw Calhoun, quoting extensively from Jefferson's Virginia Resolutions, double down on his position. In 1832, Calhoun resigned and was appointed to the Senate by the SC legislature, which declared the Tariff of 1828 nullified. A historic debate between Webster and Calhoun about the nature of the union followed and most agreed that Calhoun's "compact" concept among sovereign states prevailed. In the end, SC repealed its nullification bill. 

                  The role of slavery in the world came under attack in the 1830's when Great Britain emancipated the empire's slaves and the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. The abolitionists initiated the first direct mail campaign against the peculiar institution. "Slavery was part of who he was, a generational atrocity woven so seamlessly into the fabric of his identity that he could not imagine himself, his family, or the South without it. So, he defended it." He led the fight against a proposal to emancipate the slaves in DC and argued that slavery was a "positive good" that enhanced the wealth of America and its white population, while raising up the lives of those from Africa. Throughout his long career, though, he did not argue for disunion. He believed in the Constitution.

                   In the spring of 1844, Pres. Tyler appointed him Sec. of State.  He served a year, but was unable to annex Texas or finish a peace treaty with Britain over the Oregon border. He returned to the Senate.  Throughout the war with Mexico, he attempted to rein in Polk's more aggressive ambitions, vehemently opposing a proposed annexation of the entire country. He opposed Wilmot's proposal to ban slavery in New Mexico and California. Beginning in 1848, tuberculosis began to ravage his lungs. The following year, California requested admission with a clause in its constitution prohibiting slavery and provoking a great national debate. Throughout the South, secession was considered. A compromise was offered by Henry Clay, also dying of tuberculosis. Calhoun's final speech was read to the Senate by a colleague on March 4, 1850. He spoke against disunion, but asked for an equalization of power between the free and slave states. If the North was not willing to share power, it should let the South peaceably go. He died later that month.

                   This excellent biography has been acclaimed by  historians and journalists alike. Calhoun was clearly an incredibly complex and brilliant man. His prodigious talents place him in the pantheon of Senate greats, alongside his contemporaries, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. His articulation of the theory of the union as a compact between sovereign states was believed by many in the first half of the 19th century. The flaw, of course, was his reliance on slavery as the foundation of that belief. The idea died with the Confederacy. It is worth remembering that Shelby Foote stated that before the Civil War, the common phraseology was that the United Stares "are."After the war, it became  the United States "is."