Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood by Colin Woodard

Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood Reviews

• 
  Geoffrey

  (Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)
  
  In this work, Collin Woodard covers the history of the different national myths that have been competing throughout America’s history (to use an understatement) up through the present. His narrative is constructed through a focus on several particular originators and promoters of the dueling visions of the nation and includes both familiar faces like Frederick Douglass and Woodrow Wilson and lesser-known figures who have played surprisingly outsized roles, such as historian George Bancroft.
  
  Between having never previously read any of Woodard’s other works, this book’s subject matter and the somewhat slow buildup at the start, I anticipated an informative, but ultimately dry read. What I experienced instead was an engrossing narrative about all of the battling strains of thought over what makes America a nation - America as a beacon of freedom for humanity, America as a divinely-sanctioned white ethnostate, America as a nation formed by the frontier, and of course, America as a hypocritical entity that claims to stand for the freedom and equality of man yet very actively oppresses all those within its borders who aren’t Anglo-Saxon and male. At different times it was eye-opening, thought-provoking, genuinely shocking and upsetting (these latter two especially as he charted the rise of and halcyon days of the racist ethnostate narrative), and at the end, a little hopeful. But after the beginning introductions, it was rarely ever dull. And although Wooded extensively details the lives of each and every one of his selected figures, his writing is so clear and accessible that at no point did I feel like I had lost track of what ultimately proved to be a very convincing big picture over which specific national myth was ascendant in any major point throughout the nation's past.
  
  To any and all with an interest in American history, I definitely recommend this extremely readable and very compelling overview of the national identity conflict that has shaped the United States and continues to do so. Meanwhile, I personally look forward to exploring Woodard’s older works.
  
• 
  Aloysius

  What is American nationhood? What is an American? This is not a new question, but it is, in light of recent events, a very relevant one. When the US was founded, the former colonies that founded it had wildly different traditions, origin stories, political economies, etc., and the average "American" felt more loyalty to his own state than to a "United States". The struggle to form an unum out of this pluribus led to five different figures to show five different visions of American identity:
  
  George Bancroft: Jacksonian, triumphalist, assimilationist
  Willliam George Simms: Slavocratic, hierarchial, white supremacist
  Fredrick Douglass: Abolitionist, egalitarian
  Woodrow Wilson: Segregationist, ethnocentric, "herrenvolk democracy"
  Frederick Jackson Turner: Frontiersman initially, but then regional in a manner similar to Woodard himself
  
  The book ends on sort of a downer, as it appears that those who favor the more exclusionary, ethnostate version of nationhood seem to hold the levers of power at the moment, but as Woodard reminds the reader, the struggle to define American nationhood didn't stop with these men's deaths or with the Civil Rights revolution, and it will not stop now.
• 
  Terry

  This book attempts to plot the development of the notion of the United States across time by following notable advocates of different views of it ranging from a genteel southern planter class ruling their social inferiors to something more egalitarian.
  
  The voices selected seems almost random and I can't imagine the full range of views were covered. This feels like an attempt to retread the arguments of the author's previous books using specific biographical examples. The narrative ends kind of suddenly with the death of Woodrow Wilson which leaves something like a century left after that.
  
  I think the most interesting aspects were:
  *Frederick Jackson Turner almost immediately turning
  *The media blitz and social engineering surrounding Birth of a Nation
  *Just how racist Woodrow Wilson was and how shitty an academic he was in terms of being able to do actual research
  *The South's general belief that the North was backward for not recognizing the natural need for social segregation
  
  Overall the book was interesting but using specific people as embodiments of ideas both involved not getting enough clarify details on their belief systems as well as being overburdened in terms of biographical detail. The author's skill is in explaining times and ideas not so much with people.
• 
  Peter Geyer

  Colin Woodard's latest book follows on from his earlier work on the nature of Americans, culturally and historically.
  
  The use of "forge" in the title invites a number of interpretations, all of which are relevant and in many ways it describes the development of a mythos, in this case "who are Americans?"
  
  "Who Australians are" is a relevant, perhaps overlapping project, particularly if the term "ethnonationalism" is applied to a similar period.
  
  Woodard structures his book with brief, interweaving, biographical chapters about George Randolph, William Gilmore Simms, Frederick Douglass, Frederick Jackson Turner and Woodrow Wilson. I'd not heard of Simms and knew of the rest, although not it depth, perhaps Turner's frontier thesis more than anything else, which may be unfair to Douglass. I only knew of Wilson because of his "Fourteen Points"
  
  These chapters are skilfully linked to various events and there are cameos by people like Lincoln and many others and they make for very interesting reading. Because the chapters can be 2 or 3 pages at times, it means that what's been read it can be left and returned.
  
  "Ethnonationalism" of course is a way of labelling claims of racial supremacy, issues not simply confined to the United States of course, as you can find similar claims being made in Elizabethan England regarding the Irish, who are compared with Native Americans. In previous books Woodard had dealt with this background with knowledge.
  
  All the people here are writers of some kind, Bancroft, Turner and Wilson as historians, a somewhat tenuous label for the first and the last if you think (as i do and have done) that actual historical research is important, not just grand theory, for want of a better term.
  
  Bancroft and Wilson have an ideology to present about the superiority of people like them, not too dissimilar to Sims the novelist, who defends and extols a way of living that distinguishes between people on various biases, particularly colour. Some of the arguments against equality are based on a particular view of the Bible, others evolution or at least how one wishes to understand that.
  
  I've never understood this perspective, which hasn't exactly been absent in my country. I didn't learn my perspective from my family, noted at one point by my mother several decades ago. I recommend Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds' "Drawing the Global Colour Line" if you want to understand the context around Wilson's time regarding immigration. My country still puts refugees in detention as though that time hasn't passed.
  
  So this is unpleasant, if informative reading, if you take my perspective.
  
  There are many highlights: Douglass' early struggles are gripping and the contrast between Lincoln at Gettysburg (I've been there) and Wilson's appearance decades later is instructive.
  
  Wilson establishing segregation in Post Offices and elsewhere, when men, women of whatever colour had worked together for decades is simply a disgrace. He had a lot of support, it seems.
  
  Turner's struggle when his initial model, based on geography (Woodard suggests culture as a better fit) doesn't really fit well elicits personal sympathy, but also a recognition that it's a good idea t look at facts and events without judgement, or at least to be prepared to change your mind, a faculty not possessed by Bancroft, Simms and Wilson, though successful writers all.
  
  I suppose a point there is that a ripping yarn might be more convincing than actual truth, something to be aware of when watching costume dramas, or even some documentaries.
  
  This is a well put together book which can be challenging and startling, as well as informative. It's genuinely shocked me at times with descriptions of particular events as well as many statements made by historical figures in the book.
  
  Not everybody is the same; here we have examples of many who seek to denigrate and judge, rather than see that as a norm. Widard suggests there's a long way to go.
  
  
• 
  Tanya

  There has been so much in the news lately about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools, and it makes me think about how the traditional story of America's origins was arrived at in the first place. Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood directly addresses that question.
  
  Woodard brings his previous ideas about America's regional cultures into his analysis, which I found very persuasive. He focuses on a handful of historians and writers who he identifies as having outsized influence on creating our national story: New Englander George Bancroft, Southern aristocrat William Gilmore Simms, escaped slave Frederick Douglass, white supremacist and eventual president Woodrow Wilson, and influential historian of the Frontier, Frederick Jackson Turner, I'm not sure how he decided that these men were the most influential; I do remember reading Turner in graduate school (for history), and of course know Douglass and Wilson, but Bancroft and Simms were less familiar to me. Anyway, Woodard shows the evolution of these thinkers' writings and teachings, and tries to show how they were propagated through universities and the country in general.
  
  I really enjoyed the book and found the changing ideas of our nation's story fascinating, particularly in regards to the role of the South and the changing opinions of who was included in the country's aspirations for equality. After reading this, I believe more than ever that it is crucial Americans be taught not just a whitewashed version of history to make them patriotic, but a truer more complete version of the past that makes them good citizens and moral people. I don't know that Critical Race Theory is the answer, but there is no reason for this not to be introduced alongside a traditional approach. We should be using history to teach analytical skills, not just to make the majority race feel good about America.
  
  4 stars.
  
• 
  Keyton

  This is an interesting hopscotch through American history. He picks some key people and periods and fleshes out some important perspectives and themes. My only quibble is that it never really seemed to live up to the subtitle. I mean sure ... the topic comes up now and then, but it felt more like he wanted to hit on specific topics than weave a narrative about nationhood.
  
  The first half focuses on Simms, Douglass, and Bancroft, three men with very different views of slavery. There's the pro-slavery southerner employing rhetoric and supremacist philosophy to perpetuate oppression, the freed slave turned viral speaker shining a light on its horrors, and the head-in-the-clouds historian praising liberty for all while hiding behind his rose-colored glasses, absolving everyone of any responsibility for the oppression happening right in front of him.
  
  The book is most effective at exposing the long deep roots of white supremacy in our history. The parts that will stick with me the longest are the deep dive into post-civil war backsliding into segregation and oppression under Andrew Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson's blatant and shameless actions to oppress blacks and foster white supremacy. These were both BIG gaps in my history background. It was also interesting to learn that a lot of the racial violence during reconstruction was cynically and politically-motivated to frighten African-Americans out of voting and running for office so white elected officials could essentially reimpose slavery. And that the first real feature-length blockbuster movie was a homage to the KKK and white supremacy, which was supported by the President, the Supreme Court, and most of the elected Congress.
  
  p. 116 "Comparing the black experience in the United States with that in the United Kingdom, Douglass would later refelct on an irony Bancroft would not: 'The republic meant slavery and the monarcyh freedom.'"
  
  p. 129 "On July 5, 1982 Douglass delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history. ... he asked what the Fourth of July meant to a slave, a question that led him to consider what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had pledged to seventy-six years earlier: the promise of universal human equality. ... He warned, 'From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen.' ... Slavery violated all those principlesand thus'brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christiany as a lie.'"
  
  p. 198 "Slavery had been defeated and the Union restored, but by the onset of the first postwar winter it appeared that LIncoln's dream to found a liberal democratic republic might have died with him. ... over the second half of 1865, President Johnson let the defeated states set about re-enslaving the freed people in everything but name."
  
  p. 212 "The reign of terror against the black population accelerated during the 1870 and 1872 election cycles, with the Klan assassinating elected officials and beating and terrorizing would-be Republican voters regardless of race. ... Congressional investigators found that in the nine months after the 1870 vote, thirty-eight South Carolina blacks were murdered by masked vigilantes, and hundreds more were beaten, shot, whipped, or disfigured by having their ears cut off. That winter thousands slept in the woods to avoid being dragged from their beds and beaten or killed by these terrorists."
  
  p. 217 "Douglass questioned why Confederate soldiers were being venerated at all. 'We are sometimes asked in the name of patriotism to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to mremeber with equal admiration those who struck at the nation's life, and those who struck to save it - those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice.'"
  
  p. 226 "Voting irregularities threw the South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida results into dispute, leaving the Democratic candidate - white supremacist Samual Tilden of New York - with 184 electoral votes, one short of an Electoral College victory. ... The election was thrown to Congress to resolve. ... In the end the parties made a deal: Hayes would become president, but white Southerners would rule at home. Federal troops withdrew from their posts prtecting the state houses in Columbia and Baton Rouge. Democratic 'Redeemer' governments took power, rolling back civil rights protections and public school spending while reintroducing many of the Black Codes. The Supreme Court issued an 1876 decision that effectively annulled the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by ruling their protections applied only to the actions of state governments, not individuals."
  
  p.256 Turner's famous essay. "History 'is more than past literature, more than past politics,more than past economics. ... It is the self-consciousness of humanity -- humanity's effort to understand itself through the study of its past. ... The story of the peopling of America has not yet been written. We do not understand ourselves.'"
  
  p. 278 Douglass "There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own constitution."
  
  p. 310 "Wilson's personal position finally became clear to all. ...WIlson retorted sharply that if blacks didn't approve of his policies, they should vote for someone else in 1916. ... Segregation prevented 'friction' between the races and, thus, improved the administrative efficiency of government. Blacks were being too sensitive, and their opposition to Jim Cros would only make things worse. Trotter pushed back, arguing 'We are not here as wards .. we are here as full-fledged American citizens, vouchsafed equality of citizenshipby the federal Constitution."
  
  p. 312 Gettysburg anniversary ceremony in 1913. "Tens of thousands of men who'd fought on that very battlefield fifty years before sat in the stands, some in blue uniform, some in gray, their faces creased, their chests covered in medals and service ribbons. Nine Confederate generals had recently led their former soldiers in a rousing rebel yell in that tent, an act that would have been unthinkable at Gettysburg just three or four decades earlier. General Bennett Young, grand commander of the United ConfederateVeterans, declared that what made the gathering remarkable was that his men had 'come as Confederates' with 'no explanations sought or expected.' Judge Alfred Beers, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, saluted theSouthern veterans on behalf of those of the North, happy that a 'war waged by men of the same race, men of the same bravery' had ended in this 'meeting of brothers.'"
  
  p. 342 The Zimmerman telegram was sent from the US Embassy (!) because Germany's cables had been cut at the beginning of the war.
  
  p. 342 "'The world must be made safe for democracy,' Wilson proclaimed in his war message to Congress on April 2. 'Its peace must be planted upon the foundations of political liberty.' He then proceeded to destroy those very foundations at home. At his insistence, Congress passed a raft of authoritarian legislation: The Sedition Act, the Espionage Act, andthe Trading with the Enemy Act. Together these acts criminalized criticizing or disagreeing with either the war effort or the government. ... Opponents of the war, including Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, were given long prison terms simply for speaking against the conflict."
  
  p. 348 "African Americans greatest ally in Paris turned out to be the Japanese delegation. Its members arrived proposing a fifteenth point that Wilson could never countenance: that the principle of racial equality would be incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations, including a guarantee that citizens of all member states could travel within the others without discrimination. ...When the Japanese forced a vote on their measure by the League of Nations Commission, it passed 11-5, with the United States and the British Empire among those opposed. Wilson, who chaired the meeting, arbitrarily announced that the measure had failed for lack of unanimity. The commissioners were outraged, as two previous decisions ... had both passed with opposition."
  
  p. 357 "The national consensus that America was effectively an Anglo-Saxon-led ethnostate outlasted Wilson's presidency by more than three decades. From 'Dick and Jane' to 'Leave it To Beaver', from Barbie dolls to 'flesh'-colored crayons, children were tuaght that they lived in a Euro-Americansociety. In the South a racial apartheid system was extended, to include everything from public parks to graveyards. In the North administrative discrimination frequently confined nonwhite people to certain neighborhoods based on their race by not granting them mortgages or insurance policies in any other areas. ... The federal government actively resisted making diversity an official part of American life. ... Domestic white supramcy was also exposing the gap between professed American ideals and the reality on the ground."
  
  
  
• 
  Michael

  This book gets off to a slow start and is incredibly "even handed" for the first half. The authors voice is almost entirely missing except for points where he pushes his "American Nations" thesis about migration patterns. Until the Civil War begins, the style is very much just surfacing the racist beliefs of the characters without much comment.
  
  The second half of the book drastically changes that. Here we get a biography of Wilson that focuses exclusively on his racism, along with the story of the authors progenitor, Frederick Jackson Turner, who never quite writes the book with the thesis of American Nations.
  
  Overall the style here is actually very good. It took some time to adjust to but it served to enlighten rather than distract in the end. I definitely learned a bunch
• 
  Erik

  A hybrid biography of key writers of American history presented as a survey of competing ideas of what unites the country. George Bankroft, William Gilmore Simms, and Frederick Douglass start the story off with diverging stories about what America was and what it should be. Then, enter Frederick Jackson Turner and Woodrow Wilson.
  
  Woodard seems to hate Wilson in particular, and presents him not just as an unreconstructed Confederate writing "Lost Cause" history -- quotes from Wilson's work made it into filmmaker DW Griffith's own racist history of the Civil War and Reconstruction, "Birth of a Nation" -- but as the first southern president since before the war, and thus, a kind of redeemer for white supremacy in the White House. If that's not bad enough, Woodard claims that Wilson was also a slacker who kind of stumbled into both history and politics, and a snob, who imagined himself as a boy to be an English lord and took that childish Anglophilia with him into adulthood.
  
  Overall, an interesting introduction to figures and ideas that have dominated American history writing.
• 
  Rohan

  For most of this book, I was certain I was going to give it a 5-star review. There's just so much to admire - it does justice to a sprawling narrative, tying together personal and professional stories of a wide range of characters and how they shaped and informed US history over nearly two centuries. The book seldom feels like a history lesson but is still able to convey an incredible amount. I found the author's own voice to be missing in the first third (until the arrival of Lincoln), but it worked to set the stage. The Civil War onwards, though, this book was unputdownable. There were times that I thought Woodard went too deep into personal stories (like that of Frederick Jackson Turner), but this is a minor quibble for an otherwise excellent narrative. My main criticism of the book is how quickly it wraps up towards the end - the conclusion seems both rushed and abrupt, and I would have loved to see another 100-or-so pages and some new characters who shaped the 20th Century. For instance, I would have loved to have more FDR, Truman, JFK, and MLK Jr.
• 
  Gretchen Hohmeyer

  Wishing that Goodreads had half-star ratings once again because I wouldn't call this a totally four-star book. Perhaps if I had read Woodard's other work, this would have felt more grounded to me, but the voices chosen to highlight at the beginning of the text felt both floating and decontextualized. It takes quite a bit to get off the ground, which feels like a slog, that leads into a much tighter, interesting, and connected back half or third with a rather abrupt end. That being said, I am fascinated with the act of history creation, who writes our history, and what we choose to keep reading, and that is absolutely part of this book's project - along with our sectional differences, although I think it's success at describing that was lesser than. All that aside, I would absolutely be interested in reading Woodard's more famous book, "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" to see that idea fleshed out more clearly. Once it got going, this was incredibly engaging to listen to.
• 
  Rebekah

  I'm always profoundly educated and inspired by Woodard's books, and this one ranks up there with
  American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America in terms of informing me and engaging and helping to mold my thoughts on U.S. history. Many of the individual historical character narrations in this volume are especially enthralling, e.g. Frederick Douglass, George Bancroft, and even racist Woodrow Wilson, whose various infirmities make him sadly sympathetic even as they help to illuminate the many manifest ill effects he had on this nation and the world.
  
  I'd like to request an in-depth treatment of the "roaring '20s" through the Depression, the New Deal, and the '50s next, please, Mr. Woodard!
• 
  Brian Ervin

  A history of American history, its distortions, and the non-linear march towards a more perfect, evidence-based, objective account of a nation in its middle age.This book drives home the persistence of racial struggle as central to our history. As a 30-something from Kansas (the Midlands, to Woodard), I am newly astounded by the false sense of accomplishment in overcoming America's original sin suggested by my elementary, high school, and cultural education. The fight over the telling of our history is as fierce as ever today, as some continue to insist that racial conflict was solved by the emancipation proclamation, the North winning the war, or if not that, at least by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. Facing the reality of our history, it's clear these events mark the beginning of the work in seeking racial justice, not the end.
• 
  Matt

  Feels almost like a prequel for American Nations and American Character. By that I mean that there are a number of people in the book who struggle to come up with a unifying story as to American history and what holds us together. That story is one of the European-based and centered American ethnostate, a story that historically never seems to be able to hold water. It even ends with Fredrick Jackson Turner struggling to compose his own version that couldn't come together.
  
  Why couldn't many historians compose a unified history of the American nation? Read Woodard's American Nations for the answer: there is more than one "nation" in the United States and they are based on very different cultures.
  
  This book is for anyone who is interested in American history, but especially for anyone who has read his American Nations and American Character. This book is very good, give it a read.
• 
  Brad

  Another tour de force from Colin Woodard. Having read his previous books, American Nations and American Character, I was familiar with his thesis that different areas of the United States developed based on the predominant cultures of the people who settled those areas. In Union, Woodard shows what happens when there is a clash between those cultures. By using biographical sketches of historians and authors he shows that the military victory of the North in the Civil War was undermined by the cultural and political victories of the South in the decades that followed, culminating in the election of possibly our most racist president ever, Woodrow Wilson. With all the upheaval currently happening in our society, Union is a must read for those who want to understand more about the history of this country.
• 
  Kieran

  I've been a fan of Colin Woodard since reading American Nations a few years ago. This is his strongest effort yet. He tells the story of American unity, regionality, and history through the stories of several individual people over several decades. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that our current national polarization is the norm rather than the exception; the only thing that has ever effectively united us as a nation is a common military enemy from outside.
  
  I don't know of anyone sharing more compelling thinking at the intersection of history, geography, sociology, and politics. Like his other work, Union provides a great lens for understanding current events. 5 stars!
• 
  Nick Anderson

  As a follow-up to American Nations, Union didn't grab and engross me as immediately but I don't think that's the book's fault necessarily. Nations jumps right into its topic, where Union, while never tedious, is a slow build for sure. It comes together as it prepares to turn the corner for it's home stretch, though, and when it does it clicked with me in a big way.
  
  TL;DR It's very good and I need to read it again very soon now that I think I can give it more of my concentration and know what I'm getting into. Woodard's perspectives on American history are seemingly always worthwhile.
• 
  Wesley Bishop

  Good history, thinking of using sections of it in class, particularly my first half of US history survey. I specifically like the sections on Bancroft. I knew very little about him before this book. Woodard does a good job contrasting whiggish progressive narratives of American history, with the reactionary backlashes of southern intellectuals, and then finally showing how the thinking of abolitionists like Douglass provided a more expansive (and critical) way to think about American history.
• 
  Jacques Poitras

  This is a superb book that explains the deeper currents running through U.S. history and current politics. It's engaging and well-told, a story about stories--competing narratives of American personified by sketches of five authors, including a former slave and a future U.S. president with very different ideas about their country. A great read in the lead-up to the presidential election.
• 
  "Dr" Kris

  This is a book about how the story evolved to explain how our country formed a union. The author does this by examining the work of five significant individuals who contributed to the two central union stories. It was long and detailed. It provides much to think about. I would not find it as important to consider as his earlier work on nations.
• 
  Taylor Kabeary

  I really enjoyed this book. It’s incredibly informative and written well, and and outlines the American Narrative and the people who shaped it in an interesting way. Some parts (like the conversation between Lincoln and Douglass) were a bit eye brow raising but I took those with a grain of salt. Would recommend to anyone who is interested in the topic!
• 
  John Balkam

  Read Union...
  
  and understand where the roots of many of our country's problems come from. Excellent piece of work by Woodard. Between Union and American Character, I have learned a ton in just the past month.
• 
  Jessica

  3.5. The balance of biographical elements and discussion of intellectual movements was a little off to me. More time on the intellectual side rather than the people might have helped. Competent but not brilliant.