Rachel A. Shelden

In Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War, Rachel A. Shelden explores the social networks that dominated Washington, D.C.’s political culture in the early nineteenth century. She draws upon social and political history and seeks to demonstrate how nontraditional politics, such as informal backroom discussions, lead to the political divisions that eventually fostered the American Civil War. Though Shelden only infrequently addresses honor directly, her discussion of the social mores that governed behavior amongst the political brotherhood in Washington, D.C. mirrors similar discussions in other books nominally about honor.
Shelden argues, “Washington society did more than just provide an environment where men from different sections could interact. It also gave politicians the opportunity to discuss political issues outside the traditional structures of law-making” (2). According to Shelden, politicians in this environment “brought their arguments, ideas, and solutions to the church pew, the dinner table, the boardinghouse parlor, and the hotel bar” (2). Discussing the Wilmot Proviso and, to a larger extent, all of Congress, Shelden writes, “In every meeting of Congress only a small amount of business of any consequence transpired during debate on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives…As the behavior of senators and representatives in Congress throughout the 1840s and 1850s demonstrates, most of the real action – the real politicking and decision making – was happening elsewhere” (17). In such a public atmosphere, maintaining social connections was of the utmost importance to politicians. One way in which they prevented social conflicts was to edit their speeches prior to publication if they felt they had caused offense. Shelden writes, “Sometimes such a misunderstanding was handled merely by making a ‘personal explanation’ on the floor of the House or Senate. In these personal explanations, a congressman would ‘clarify’ a previous speech in an attempt to erase any misapprehension that he had meant to cause offense” (31). Politicians also feared the impact of the media in spreading those misunderstandings. Shelden writes, “Congressmen could be particularly nervous about what reporters were publishing when it came to ‘affairs of honor,’” thereby referencing the political honor culture that Joanne Freeman described in her book of the same name (31). Alternatively, politicians could use the media to enhance their political clout and image with constituents back home. Shelden writes, “Senators and representatives made a show out of every aspect of congressional debate from speeches to physical barbs” (33). Using the example of Henry Foote, who pulled a pistol on Thomas Hart Benton in the Senate, Shelden argues that this momentary outburst did not prevent the men from continuing to associate with one another due to the “company town” nature of Washington, D.C.
Shelden uses Congressman Preston Brooks’s caning of Senator Charles Sumner over a perceived slight that Sumner gave North Carolina and Brooks’s cousin as a window into the violence of Washington, D.C.’s political culture. Shelden writes, “Violence was simply a part of the city’s daily operation and was often a by-product of morally lenient behavior, including the consumption of alcohol, gambling, womanizing, and other misdeeds” (124). These violent encounters “frequently involved the use of weapons,” either canes or pistols (139). While many congressmen resorted to brawling, others “engaged in more formal violence by issuing a challenge for a duel. These duels included some cross-sectional quarrels [Northerners against Southerners] but also a number of intrasectional pairs. Many of these ‘affairs of honor’ had their origins in some sort of disagreement in the House of Senate” (141). Though these encounters engaged in the formal machinery of the duel, “sometimes disagreements did not make it outside the Capitol” and disagreeing parties resorted to a mêlée (141). Shelden writes, "Work in the Capitol was not always harmonious; angry exchanges in the form of duels and other violence were a critical part of the Washington lifestyle. Yet the prevalence of congressional fighting and the general sociability of the chambers were not mutually exclusive. Despite personal disagreements and occasional violence, lawmakers strove to make their workplace tolerable by maintaining amiable relations among most of the members" (149). These relationships were inevitable in the highly rarefied political atmosphere of Washington, D.C. where the shared experience of working in politics acted as a bond between men not only of the same party, but of different parties and even different and distant regions (148). Shelden concludes with the American Civil War. As senators and representatives left over secession, “Washington’s lawmakers engaged with the secession crisis the way they were used to handling all political issues: by working together outside of the halls of Congress at dinners and parties, over drinks, and at the faro table” (171). Even during the war, men like William Seward attempted to maintain personal associations, demonstrating how the political was personal and vice versa.
Shelden draws upon other studies of honor like Freeman’s Affairs of Honor, Kenneth Greenberg’s Honor and Slavery, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor. Additionally, as Shelden frames her argument in the context of explaining one of the causes of the Civil War, she draws primarily upon historians of that conflict such as William J. Cooper, Jr., Daniel W. Crofts, David Herbert Donald, Eric Foner, Michael Holt, Daniel Walker Howe, and more. Shelden makes extensive use of the congressmen’s own letters and writings, as well as those of their wives, in order to reconstruct the world of Washington, D.C. on the eve of Civil War. In addition to these private documents, she makes use of well over one hundred volumes of published correspondence, diaries, and public letters.… (meer)

Rachel Shelden's Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War (UNC Press, 2013) offers a fresh look at Washington society in the decades leading up to the Civil War, concentrating not on the occasional violent outburst but instead on the day-to-day camaraderie and social interactions of elected officials from across the regional and political spectrum. Shelden highlights a number of situations in which personal friendships between legislators had important consequences for the resolution of sectional differences, and argues for the existence of a Washington "bubble" that kept many of those who might have prevented the ultimate break from seeing it coming to the extent that they might have.

The author has done her research well, drawing on a wide range of unpublished papers, boardinghouse directories, Congressional seating charts, and other materials. She stresses the importance of not relying on the record of Congressional debates as the main source for sectional animus, noting that often legislators who were violently critical of their political opponents in public were close personal friends. She ably explains the Young Indians, a small group of Whig congressmen from across the sectional divide (including Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Stephens) who played a key role in the Whig selection of Zachary Taylor as the party's nominee in 1848 and cemented lasting personal bonds and perceptions between its members (for good and ill, as it turned out).

An excellent exploration of social and cultural connections which provide important context to the history of the antebellum period.… (meer)