I hope you’ll take a chance to check out others’ blog posts on this “snow day”:
Drawing on her understanding of the role of crisis in party realignment in the U.S., Renee found Kornblith’s article “quite persuasive.” Juri – although he was somewhat bothered by the assumptions Kornblith made as he crafted his counterfactual hypothesis – found Kornblith’s argument a “reasonable” case that “lends doubt to the fundamentalist viewpoint.”
Not everyone found Kornblith convincing. Alex finds too many “leaps of faith” in Kornblith’s theory that the issue of slavery could have faded into the background. Alex explains, “there must have already been heated tensions about the growing institution of slavery, even before the annexation of the Mexican Cession.” Jocelyn adds that Kornblith has not thoroughly considered fundamentalists’ arguments about the importance of economic differences and the role of the Fugitive Slave Law.
At the conclusion of his article, Kornblith acknowledged that counterfactual method could never resolve the debate between revisionists and fundamentalists. However, he hoped his article would encourage readers reflect on “how different factors interacted to bring war in 1861, rather than at another date.” Was Kornblith successful in this goal, even for those of you who disagreed with the shape that his counterfactual hypothesis took? How useful would this methodology be for navigating other debates in Civil War historiography?