972
PARTISAN REVIEW
of a particular generation or democratic politics in general. But,
if
the indictment "blundering generati&n" meant no more than a general
complaint that democratic politics placed a premium on emotionalism,
then the Civil War would have been no more nor less "needless' than
any event in our blundering history. The phrase "blundering genera–
tion" must consequently imply that the generation in power in the
htties was
below
the human or historical or democratic average in
its blundering. Hence the third revisionist thesis:
3) that the slavery problem could have been solved without
war. For, even if slavery were as unimportant as the revisionists have
insisted, they would presumably admit that it constituted the real
sticking-point in the relations between the sections. They must show
therefore that there were policies with which a non-blundering gen–
eration could have resolved the slavery crisis and averted war; and
that these policies were so obvious that the failure to adopt them in–
dicated blundering and stupidity of
.a
peculiarly irresponsible nature.
If
no such policies could be produced even by hindsight, then it
would seem excessive to condemn the politicians of the fifties for fail–
ing to discover them at the time.
The revisionists have shown only a most vague and sporadic
awareness of this problem. "Any kind of sane policy in Washington
in 1860 might have saved the day for nationalism," remarked Craven;
but he did not vouchsafe the details of these sane policies; we would
be satisfied to know about one.* Similarly Randall declared that
there were few policies of the fifties he would wish repeated if the
period were to be lived over again; but he was not communicative
about the policies he would wish pursued. Nevins likewise blamed
the war on the "collapse of American statesmanship," but restrained
himself from suggesting how a non-collapsible statesmanship would
have solved the hard problems of the fifties.
In view of this reticence on a point so crucial to the revisionist
argument, it is necessary to reconstruct the possibilities that might lie
in the back of revisionism. Clearly there could be only two "solutions"
to the slavery problem: the preservation of slavery, or its abolition.
Presumably the revisionists would not regard the preservation
• It is fair to say that Professor Craven seems in recent years to have modified
his earlier extreme position; see his article "The Civil War and the Democratic
Process,"
Abraham Lincoln Quarterly,
June 1947.
