When I picked up Thomas Fleming's book, "A Disease in the Public Mind", I didn't expect to find too many new facts about the origins of the Civil War, but I was proved wrong. In the simplist terms, I would have said that Lincoln had abolishonist leanings, and upon being elected President, the slave holding states decided to seceed from the Union. But clearly, there had to be a little more going on in the background, and it's those details which Fleming provides.

While the slavery issue was the main issue leading up to the Civil War, Fleming presents many other historical and political issues from that era which set the stage for the secession of the Southern States. One thing which he points out, which many people fail to recognize, is that secession was an idea first discussed by Northern States, and later picked up and considered by states in the south.

Fleming also writes about many other facts which were either new to me, or which I hadn't thought about very much. For one thing, I had never really thought about what percent of Southern families were actually slave holders. I had assumed that most southern families owned slaves, but apparently, that was not the case. But if most southern families were not slave holders, why was there such overwhelming support for secession in the South? One reason which Fleming talks about is the well known experience of Haiti earlier in the 19th Century, which had a slave revolt and many of the former masters and families were killed. So there was a general fear that, if freed, the former slaves might retaliate against the former slaveholders, similar to the experience in Haiti at the beginning of the Century.

I also found the Congressional debates from the years prior to the Civil War to be very interesting. Slavery in the territories and new States, and the abolishonist movement in the North, and the key players in the debates on both sides was very informative.


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I read this book because I wanted to better understand the recent debate about the cause of the Civil War. Was it a lost cause in defense of homeland, or was it a traitorous rebellion to preserve slavery? Somehow many Americans still don't agree on this question. And recent protests over Confederate monuments made this a national issue, even for a removed westerner like me. After Chief of Staff John Kelly said the Civil War was caused by lack of compromise, and pundits and historians blew their tops, I needed some context.

I liked that Fleming was a respected historian with Revolutionary chops. And I was caught by Fleming's title and premise. What was the misguided thinking that allowed fellow countrymen to kill each other? Why couldn't slavery have been resolved by political means? What split us then, and could it help me understand our split today?

Fleming addressed some of my questions. Southerners inherited their economic system and had some opportunities to reform themselves (what Fleming called their earlier "Emancipation Proclamations"), but they were never of one mind about it, and were haunted by the bloody reports of past slave rebellions. They did not believe there could be peace between the races. And northerners cohabited with some particularly zealous abolitionists who persisted in antagonizing and demonizing southern "Slavocrats". Many believed slavery was wrong, and didn't think equality was right either, but there wasn't a clear way to change the system anyway. And I learned of the rivalry between New England and Virginia to influence the nation's destiny, and the north sometimes felt impotent against southern power and the procession of strong southern Presidents. Some northern leaders briefly considered succession early on, long before the south who would sternly remind the north of that fact.

I had trouble with some of Fleming's tone. He often portrayed abolitionists and their northern sympathizers to be harsh, hateful, violent, irresponsible, and unreasonable. And it seemed like southern slaveholders were often conflicted, good intentioned, and restrained from reform by fear and circumstances. The slave rebellions were truly horrible to read, but the reactive and routine atrocities of white slaveholders seemed downplayed. I really struggled hearing abolitionist rhetoric (which seemed admirable to my ears) portrayed as malicious attacks. Lincoln was treated reverentially, endowed as the only man with the gifts to heal the union. Lee played a noble character who could not accept charge of the Union army because of how disrespectful the north was for the south.

Maybe I'm not giving this book a fair shake (I mean, it really was historically revealing to me), but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I would have done better with a more academic writer, with a more data-focused, dispassionate approach. ( )

Okay, first, all historical events have many causes. Looking back, we like to isolate one or the other as the primary cause or causes. Fleming offers a new way to look at the Civil War which is worth a look.

While history is written by the victor, Fleming sees problematic actions on both sides in the march towards war. Fleming shows how the abolitionists contributed to the South's resolve by blocking access to the new territories. While few of the soldiers fighting on the southern side were slave owners, he attributes the southern zeal to a fear caused by the aftermaths of the slave revolt in Haiti where the former white owners were slaughtered, and to the North's insistence that the new territories be slave-free. Given the growing slave population and both a fear of slaughter caused by freeing them and no "release value" allowing them to ship slaves to the new territories, the Southerners found themselves trapped by their own fears and forced to fight.

As I said, it's a theory and worth a listen. ( )

Scholars don’t often look to James Buchanan, America’s 15th president, as a source of quotable material, but Thomas Fleming does just that in A Disease in the Public Mind, his latest book, which proffers what he says is a novel explanation of the outbreak of the Civil War.

Buchanan used the title phrase to describe the attitude of John Brown and the abolitionists, who attempted to spark a slave rebellion with an ill-fated raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Buchanan saw Brown's movement as only a small part of an incurable fanatical disease that affected a large segment of Northern opinion. And to a large extent, Fleming agrees with Buchanan.

The abolitionists are not the only diseased characters in Fleming’s morality play — Southern whites were even more delusional in their apocalyptical fear of a slave uprising. With the examples of Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia and the slave revolution in Saint-Domingue, southerners were motivated far more by fear of a black hecatomb than by the potential loss of cheap labor. Moreover, the press in both areas of the country tended to exaggerate the risks faced by their citizens and to fan the flames of intersectional hatred.

Fleming argues that even before the outbreak of hostilities, northern whites hated not only the institution of slavery, but despised white southerners even more. And white southerners, most of whom did not own slaves, could still hate northerners for potentially subjecting them to the unspeakable perils of a race war (i.e., with them as the innocent victims). As the 1850s drew to a close, Fleming writes, “a perfect storm of deadly emotions was poised to engulf the United States of America.”

Evaluation: While the author’s take on the Civil War isn’t as innovative as he would have us think, he knows how to turn history into a good story, and the book is worth reading. The concept of a disease in the public mind is a useful concept in understanding not only the Civil War, but today’s United States. Basically, he is referring to passions inflamed by propaganda and misinformation. Certainly those media figures of today who strive to stir up antipathy between classes and races could be seen as continuing in this tradition. Nevertheless, the Southern animus toward blacks and against freeing the slaves was much more than just the result of sectional hatred. Fleming sacrifices a more in-depth and astute analysis in the interest of supporting his conceptual framework. ( )