BREAK IT UP

A contributor to the Nation revisits American history, highlighting the many crises that nearly caused permanent fracture.

In his latest book, Kreitner effectively cleans the window that stands between us and our history—or what we have believed about our history. Beginning in 1620 with the arrival of the Pilgrims and ending with the election of Donald Trump—“the 2016 presidential election set off a volcanic upheaval unlike any since the one [Walt] Whitman welcomed in 1861. The next day, many Americans walked around as if in a daze, their faces the portrait of a divided nation”—the text highlights those moments, some no doubt unfamiliar to many readers, when colonies, territories, states, and groups within states considered rebellion and secession. Although the author discusses the most prominent of these, the Civil War, he focuses more on the little-known. He reminds us that the 13 Colonies did not gleefully unite against the British, that the Constitution did not arrive to universal acclaim, that we did not all leap enthusiastically into the War of 1812, that we have long feared and mistreated immigrants, and that there were numerous instances when our country was close to falling apart. Oregon, Washington, Texas, California, the New England states—these and other states have considered secession; in some cases, these efforts have been quite recent. Throughout, the author does an admirable job suppressing his own political views—until near the end, when he expresses his horror about the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, the GOP’s intransigence with Barack Obama and its use of cultural issues (abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools) to divide and conquer, the interference of Russia in our elections (yes, the Russians benefit mightily from an America in disarray), and the behavior of Trump, who has “certainly made those [cultural/political] divisions far worse.”

Richly researched, revelatory, disturbing, and essential to those wandering in the mists of American myth.