Checks and Balances

"Jefferson and Hamilton; each a luminous representative of his own view of life; each essential for the health of the republic; and each forever opposed to the other. It is doubtful it in all their lives they could have found one point of agreement, except the need for American independence. They wore such perfect opposites that to this day most Americans make a cult of one or the other; few are able to do justice to both."

In his new study of the evolving American political system. Herbert Agar not only tries to do justice to both sides of the conflicts and tensions from which the compromise of American democracy has emerged. He also attempts to show that these tensions and disagreements underlie the success of a political system that is logically and ideally impossible, but has endured for a century and a half in which the other nations of the world have run the gamut of political change from anarchy to dictatorship in unending succession.

Reality vs Ideal

"The Price of Union" is a book about practices rather than ideals, accomplishments rather than programs. In his systematic review of American history from the background of the Revolution to the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, historian-journalist Agar (Pulitzer Prize winner and former editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal) is always on the history he records-for the opposing pressures and influences from which the events arose.

Agar's political study takes its impetus from the Revolution and the formation of the Constitution (which he interprets politically as Beard does economically). He then goes on to trace the development of a second, "unwritten" constitution-a compound of political compromises and "bargains" which withstood every problem of national life in the nineteenth century but one, the Civil War.

The Civil War

Agar's optimistic view of the efficacy of the American party system faces its real test in the Civil War; and on this point he averts criticism by staging bluntly that the party and political system failed, for the only time, in the emotional and moral crisis of the 1850's.

"The decisive American experience-the warning against politics based on principles-took place between 1850 and 1860. A subtle and healing compromise had been effected in 1850; yet year by year, whether through fate or human folly, it slowly disintegrated. The best men watched in anguish but could not halt the ruin. In the name of principles and distinctive tenets the Whig Party was ground to bits...Finally, the same 'principles' broke the Democratic party, and the Union of 1789 perished."

"Instead of seeking 'principles' or distinctive tenets, which can only divide a federal union, the party is intended to seek bargains between the regions, the classes, and the other interest groups. It is intended to brig men and women of all beliefs, occupations, sections, racial backgrounds, into a combination for the pursuit of power. The combination is too various to possess firm convictions."

Expendable Ideals

And in the last statement lies Agar's real assessment of the "price" of American union; the fact that we must sacrifice ideals for realities to stay alive and united. His book also shows that "obstruction, evasion, and well-nigh intolerable slowness" are also necessary concomitants of the American political system. But lest the conditions he adds a reminder that "no matter how high one puts the price of federal union, it is small compared to the price which other continents have paid for disunion, and for the little national states in which parties of principle can live (or more often die) for their clearly defined causes."

Agar's illuminating study ends with the true journalist's application of is text to the immediate situation: he suggests that a modern world torn by conflicting ideologies and seeking a compromise "might do worse than study the curious methods by which such assuagements are effected" in the marvelous history of the American republic.