A Hell of a Storm
The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War
Table of Contents
About The Book
The fascinating story of how a new law in 1854—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War.
The history of the United States was shaped by a series of sectional compromises—the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords formed an imperfect republic, or “a house divided,” as Abraham Lincoln put it, the country nevertheless remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leading to a nearly fatal rupture in the union, described here by David S. Brown in riveting detail.
The act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved people to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—the core of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, which had formerly been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery, and they responded defiantly. In the bill’s wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) gave way to the “radical” Republican Party, which, within six years, would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession.
In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with contemporary events. Through chapters on Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the rise of the Republican Party, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and left space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.
About The Author
David S. Brown teaches history at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of eight books, including In the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt in War, Peace, and Revolution; A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War; The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson; The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams; and biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Hofstadter.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (September 17, 2024)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668022832
Raves and Reviews
"Insightful . . . historian David S. Brown makes a convincing case for the importance of 1854 . . . a compelling story that explains how Americans abandoned compromise and turned to war to resolve their differences." —Wall Street Journal
"Lively . . . A series of vibrantly narrated vignettes demonstrate the Act’s radicalizing effect . . . Readers will be entranced by this sharply drawn study of sectarian feeling.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Engaging . . . intriguing and persuasive . . . Brown’s ultimate conclusions are apt, compelling, and memorably expressed. . . . A lively, incisive examination of the social and political background of a tumultuous era.” —Kirkus
“Noteworthy . . . readers will come away better informed about antebellum history and how it mirrors current events.” —Booklist
"David S. Brown has crafted a fascinating narrative web, one that expertly interweaves the well-known with the little-remembered. The book abounds in compelling portraits of the great and not-so-great. A Hell of a Storm is a hell of a book, insightfully revealing how America's best minds could not avert America's greatest calamity." —John Matteson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Eden's Outcasts and A Worse Place Than Hell
"No one who encounters David Brown's new re-telling of the infamous 'Nebraska Bill' will be in any doubt that it was the most toxic piece of legislation ever to pass a U.S. Congress. With a sharply ironic pen, Brown walks us through the terrible unfolding of the year 1854 and the deadly ways it pointed the nation toward civil war. A tour de force!" —Allen C. Guelzo, Princeton University, author of Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
"David S. Brown plies his historian’s conscience along the ragged seams of American politics and violence, people and events, reminding us that our choices make and unmake our history. His skillful chronicle of the decline of compromise culture is adventuresome, ominous, and, in our convulsive days, necessary." —John Summers, historian and author of Every Fury on Earth
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- Author Photo (jpg): David S. Brown Photograph by Heike Martin(0.1 MB)
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