A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War

by Thomas Fleming

Overview

By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their campaign against Southern slave owners. This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson’s cry, “We are truly to be pitied,” summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities. By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306822018
Publisher:	Da Capo Press
Publication date:	05/07/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	158,193
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Thomas Fleming is a distinguished historian and the author of more than fifty books. A frequent guest on PBS, A&E, and the History Channel, Fleming has contributed articles to American Heritage, MHQ, and other magazines. He lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

Always a quirky, contrarian writer-historian, the prolific Fleming (Washington’s Secret War) offers what he deems a fresh take on the causes of the Civil War. But despite its subtitle, his interpretation isn’t new, and it doesn’t hold up. Fleming’s argument—that fanatics in the North and South drove the nation into avoidable conflict in 1861—was also the argument of a few mid-20th-century historians, like James G. Randall, who called the war’s belligerents a “blundering generation.” If only reason had prevailed, they wistfully regretted, slavery would have withered from within, and all would have been well. But this stance—which is Fleming’s—ignores recent scholarship, which has found that slavery likely would have endured. It also requires Fleming to ignore the war’s profound moral issue, viz. that slavery is an evil. Surely there was much fanaticism, and some slaves were raising themselves up by “mastering the technology of the South’s agriculture as well as the psychology of leadership.” Perhaps change was possible—but it would have been a creeping transformation carried out over decades on the backs of over 3 million slaves, and it would’ve deeply scarred the nation’s moral and international standing. This book can serve neither as a reliable guide to the past, nor as authoritative argument and scholarship. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor, Grosvenor Literary Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Disease in the Public Mind

"Lincoln would have liked this brilliant book. It lights a path through history to his great goal: an America united by understanding and forgiveness."—Charles Bracelen Flood, author of 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History

"For a different take on the Civil War...Thomas Fleming is a delightful and provocative historian."—Washington Times

"A sweeping work"—Civil War Book Review

Kirkus Reviews, March 2013
“[A] thesis-driven tour.”

Booklist, 4/1
“The prolific Fleming, for decades a fixture among American historians, pinpoints public opinion as the proximate origin of the war…Making a plausible presentation of antebellum attitudes and illusions, Fleming is sure to spark lively discussion about the Civil War.”

Publishers Weekly, 3/18
“[Fleming is] always a quirky, contrarian writer-historian.”

What Would the Founders Think?, 4/10/13
“An interesting and readable book. In the course of Fleming’s narrative he casts light on some little discussed related events.”

Roanoke Times, 4/26/13
“A thoughtful examination of the root cause of that costly conflagration that interrupted the lives of the entire nation…Fleming’s trademark as an historian is his ability to tell a story without interjecting his bias or his own opinions, unless they are supported by facts. In this book, Fleming continues that tradition of professional observation…Fleming’s story about our ‘disease in the public mind’ is the very essence of good history.”

Library Journal, 5/1/13
“Controversial.”

New York Journal of Books, 5/7/13
“Do we really need another book about the Civil War? Mr. Fleming makes a solid, compelling case in the affirmative. His narrative weaves new threads through this seminal event in American history. Through his exposition of largely ignored events he affords us a clearer, much more succinct picture of antebellum America…Fleming’s scholarship digs further into the prevailing Southern and Northern attitudes and mores of the period to draw into sharper relief the more widespread concerns, political and public, behind the Civil War…Certainly this book will provoke controversy of some manner, but we can ill afford to take as gospel truth what has typically been passed off as general history…A Disease in the Public Mind is not simply a thoughtful read, it is another call never to forget our sordid past, to face and conquer our fears.”

Wall Street Journal, 5/25/13
“A great deal of fine scholarship…Mr. Fleming more than supports his arguments…Well-researched and well-written…[A] superbly revisionist book.”

American History, August 2013
“Thoughtful and provocative…The prewar arc of divisive national self-destruction he describes looks eerily, unhappily familiar today.”

ForeWard, Summer 2013
“Extremely captivating…Ties together disparate people and events in revealing ways…Fascinating and entertaining.”

Philadelphia Tribune, 5/23/13
“Makes a convincing case that the polarization that divided the North and South and led to the Civil War began decades earlier than most historians are willing to admit…A Disease in the Public Mind is an attempt to offer understanding and forgiveness for both sides of a war the continues to challenge the country’s founding principles of liberty and equality.”

Garden Grove Journal, 5/23/13
“[Fleming’s] research is excellent…This book presents an interesting perspective on the Civil War and its causes that is a clear departure from most of the literature on that subject.”

Huffington Post, 8/27/2013
“With myth destroying zeal and careful research Fleming contends that a fanatical sense of moral superiority on the part of the abolitionists, an irrational fear of a race war by Southerners abetted by sinister political posturing, and a deeply biased media were the prime motivating factors in a war that by far surpassed the casualties of all wars combined since America was founded…Fleming delves deeply into the hate and alarm engendered by both sides.”

Collected Miscellany, 2/17/2014
“A fascinating look at the causes of the Civil War…Fleming makes a convincing argument that the fringe elements (fanatics in his words) in both regions pushed the country toward a civil war…Any fan of Civil War history would enjoy this engaging and enlightening take on the causes of the Civil War.”

The Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award Winner

Roanoke Times (Va), 3/23/14
“Fleming’s emphasis on slavery politics, rather than military operations, presents a book that will stir lively debate.”

Villadom Times (NJ), 3/19/14
“Read this book if you want to understand America as a reality and not as a collection of myths.”

Harvard Bookstore, Best Sellers List, 9/5/14

Sturbridge Times Magazine, December 2014
“An exploration of how we got from slavery’s introduction to the fratricidal conflict. It is also somewhat of a history of the nation up to that point, as the two are not separable…It is detailed in its exploration of slavery and the impact of the peculiar institution on the development of the United States and is a wonderful resource.

From the Publisher

With the premise that the United States was the only nation to fight a large-scale war to end slavery, prolific popular historian Fleming (The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers) attempts to explain why we went about abolishing slavery in that way. Behind his approach is the idea that it need not have taken a war. He locates radical abolition in the North, stirring up hatred for Southern white men, and Southerners' irrational fear of race wars owing to what happened in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) as "diseases in the public mind" that were morally culpable for the tragedy of the Civil War. Many readers will find Fleming's criticism of abolitionist heroes such as William Lloyd Garrison, along with his nuanced position on Southern slavery, controversial. They may also locate factual errors (e.g., references to West Virginia in the 1820s long before it existed as a separate state). The author's distinction between "pilgrims" and "puritans" when describing New England culture is muddied. Finally, he ignores one of the most obvious reasons for why it took a civil war to end slavery in the United States: geography. Slavery was a sectional issue here; it did not exist as such in other nations. VERDICT Not recommended.—Michael Farrell, Reformed Theol. Seminary, Orlando, FL

Library Journal

A prolific popular historian casts a harsh light on the abolitionists, insisting that their vitriolic rhetoric deserves more blame for the Civil War. In a preface, Fleming (The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers, 2009, etc.) establishes his thesis and defines his terms--diseased public minds have made possible everything from the Salem witch trials to 9/11--then writes that he would like to have been an observer at John Brown's 1859 Harpers Ferry raid. Not many sentences unspool before readers realize that Fleming is no fan of Brown. In the author's view (expanded in later chapters), Brown was a lying, murdering madman, a failure at most everything he attempted. After the Harpers Ferry moments, Fleming returns to the arrival of the first slaves to America in the 17th century, then guides us slowly forward to the outbreak of the Civil War, then to Appomattox and its aftermath. Along the way, he says things that won't endear him to more liberal readers. He defends the slave-owning founders, emphasizing their ambivalence (without any commentary about, say, Sally Hemings), and alludes to research that shows there wasn't as much rape of slave women as the abolitionists averred--and that most slave owners weren't really into whipping and other fierce punishments. (He does condemn slavery, calling it "deplorable.") But John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and others--they were so intent on demonizing the South (where many did not own slaves, Fleming reminds us) that they contributed substantially to the regional polarization that eventually led to war. If only people had been more willing to talk, negotiate and compromise, writes the author. All fine, of course, unless you and yours have been enslaved for more than two centuries. At times, this thesis-driven tour employs a curious moral compass.

Kirkus Reviews