February 28, 1844.  In one of those odd accidents that give violent shape to history, a muzzle loading cannon aboard the USS Princeton exploded in clear view of President John Tyler.  Several bystanders died instantly, including the Secretary of State, Abel Upshur.  A pleasure cruise down the Potomac provides a tragic turning point in Joel Silbey’s concise and compelling Storm Over Texas.  Upshur’s death led to the emergence of Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun in Tyler’s cabinet, during the 1844 election year. Secretary Calhoun “clearly, deliberately, and optimistically fanned the flames of sectional tensions,” (43) using the then white-hot Texas annexation debate to do so.  As early as 1836, New Englander John Quincy Adams saw in the Texas rebellion a conspiracy of slaveholding interests (48.)  The sectional crisis, begun through annexation, in time brought down the Union, according to Silbey.  Calhoun emerges sinisterly, upsetting “everyone’s applecart” in writing to warn the British ambassador against Crown interference in American affairs.  Texas, argues Calhoun, must be joined to the Union: the United States government must negotiate annexation “in order to preserve a domestic institution” (41.)  In seven mischievous words, Calhoun hijacked Tyler’s electoral platform on behalf of the slaveholding South. 

The book begins with a prophetic statement by New York Congressman Daniel Barnard: “as certain as truth and God exist, the admission of Texas into the Union will prove, sooner or later, an element of overwhelming ruin to the republic” (xviii.)  This serves to foreshadow Silbey’s elegantly simple thesis.  He points to the demon of sectional animosity unleashed by annexation, filling the vacuum of Jacksonian-era national politics.  He treats with some skepticism Polk’s reputation as “Young Hickory”—the heir to the Jacksonian throne.  Nowhere was Polk’s Southern bias more evident than in his willingness to go to war with Mexico over the shape of the Texan border, while compromising with Britain over the extent of the free soil of Oregon Territory.  While readers may object to powder keg explanations or monocausal theories of the Civil War’s origins, Texas annexation does offer a solid foundation from which to understand the vehemence of antebellum sectionalism.  The disintegration of the Union is played out from 1844 to close via the Mexican-American war and its aftermath, through the political peaks and troughs that accompanied the spread of slavery and free soil, and the pyrotechnic meltdown of the Democratic Party.  Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, and the Compromise of 1850 are not diminished as contributive factors by Silbey’s account but the Texas controversy serves to interpret the chaotic nexus of events leading to war.  Those looking for social history should look elsewhere: this is politics as national drama, intersected by electoral intermissions and Congressional soliloquies.  There are no obvious heroes, although Martin van Buren and Stephen Douglas are treated sympathetically, both for their loyalty to Jacksonian Democracy and their various attempts to bridge an ever-widening North-South divide.  Storm Over Texas articulates the complexities of the descent into war, but does so almost exclusively from a Congressional perspective.  More seen from the Texas side of the border would have added balance and contrast to Silbey’s thesis.  Nevertheless, he has written a first-class introduction to the annexation crisis: “a sudden, resounding fire bell in the night, one that rang… with more effect, than any that had preceded it” (181.)