Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

I fully agree with @KeriLeighMerrit

As someone who grew up watching the #CivilWar documentary countless times & visiting battlefields (my mom is a Civil War buff), I thought I knew something about the #CiviWar.

But then I started studying for my PolSci PhD...[THREAD]

https://twitter.com/KeriLeighMerrit/status/1120730755527790592

In my PhD program is when I first learned about the bargaining model of war

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

After leaning about it, I said, "Hmm. I think I know a few things about the Civil War. And now I know a few things about why wars start. But something isn't quite connecting." 🤔

Specifically, as @KeriLeighMerrit writes, "By the end of the documentary, Ken Burns and his team made the Civil War seem almost unavoidable"

For me, the documentary left unexplained why militarized violence broke out. The documentary offers a simple "the South secede from the union and war ensued" type narrative.

But why war?

Why not first try economic pressure (I had read @dandrezner afterall)?

Well, turns out they tried that

Or why not reach another compromise, like had happened before?

Well, as I began to read, seems that option was considered and rejected.

link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

So why did Lincoln resort to full scale militarized mobilization as the solution?

This question had me perplexed because Lincoln had publicly stated that he would not resort to force against the South: “there will be no invasion [of the Southern states]—no using of force against or among the people anywhere”

Lincoln said that during his 1st Inaugural

So I began reading and researching on the topic.

Turns out, this had implications for understanding conflict more generally, not just the #CivilWar.

For that reason, I wrote two papers:

The first paper directly addressed Lincoln's decision to use militarized force and was published in @SecStudies_Jrnl

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Yep, you read the subtitle correctly.

It seemed that the British recognizing the Confederacy was perceived to be likely in early summer of 1861. Why would the British do that? Simple: 👇

Such recognition would be bad for the Union because it would be the first step towards an alliance.

books.google.com/books?id=uIspT…

Charles Adams (US Minister to the UK) wrote to William Seward (Sec State) stating that preventing recognition required a forceful demonstration of an unwillingness to let it happen.

Specifically, he wrote: “after all, [The British] are much disposed to fall in with the opinion of Voltaire... that ‘Dieu est toujours sur le cot´e des gros canon’ (‘God is always on the side of the big guns’).”

Here is the except (from FRUS)

The result is Lincoln's authorization of the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas depending on where you grew up)

Afterwards, the Confederacy and Union fully mobilized and recognition was "tabled" by the British.

The second paper was published in @AJPS_Editor and used Lincoln's Gamble to motivate exploring a more general phenonomenon: leaders "backing in" to conflict

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

My colleagues and I noticed how the large literature on "audience costs" mostly focused on one action: leaders threatening to use force and then backing down

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

We saw Lincoln's decision as pointing to "the other side of the game tree": promising to "stay out" and then changing your mind

Of course, this is a common phenonomon. Indeed, as we pointed out in this @monkeycageblog piece, President Trump did this with Syria

washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

In the paper, we found that being inconsistent by "backing in" has similar effects to being inconsistent by "backing out": you can lose public support, but can also "explain away" the inconsistency (a la @mchorowitz & levendusky)

journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.101…

In short, @KeriLeighMerrit's @SmithsonianMag piece resonated with me because the Ken Burns #CivilWar documentary (and my questions about it) shaped my personal intellectual journey.

(end)