ABSTRACT
Nathaniel Beverley Tucker's second novel, The Partisan Leader, has attracted attention since 1862, when a New York publisher offered it as proof that Southerners had conspired for thirty years to secede. The novel revolves around the experiences of a family in an imagined civil war between Northern and Southern states; however, the argument for the author's prescience is weak. The central family in the novel, the Trevor family, comprises two branches. One is headed by Hugh Trevor, the older of two brothers and, a moderate Unionist. A brief review of Tucker's antipathy for Van Buren helps to demonstrate why Tucker's political message became so overpowering. A number of commentators, contemporary as well as modern, have attempted to argue that Hugh Trevor and his brother Bernard are actually representations of Henry and Beverley Tucker. In Tucker's hierarchical society, the relationship between parent and child, must be placed above all others.
