Into the Murky World of Class Consciousness

In a 1975 article on the place of yeomen farmers in a slave society, Eugene D. Genovese identified a critical question concerning the nature of the Old South. The issue, he wrote, is to explain "the degree of class collaboration and social unity" that existed among all whites, which to Genovese appeared "all the more impressive in the face of so many internal strains."¹ Although some critics mistakenly charged that Genovese argued for non-slaveholder passivity in the face of planter hegemony, he was, in actuality, acknowledging that class relations were permeated with tension and discord, causing bitter resentments that occasionally flared into conflict among white folks. Yet Genovese never found evidence of a populist insurgency against slaveholder authority, a struggle in which the very basis of power was contested. He suggested—what scholars such as Steven Hahn, Lacy Ford, and Stephanie McCurry have more recently developed with amazing sophistication—that an intricate web of political, economic, and cultural relations bound whites together through shared material and ideological interests imbedded in human bondage.

Although Genovese's interpretive framework of the antebellum white South has stood the test of time, scholars remain somewhat uneasy as to whether slavery transcended the great economic and political divide between rich and poor. Some historians are especially troubled by the image of a planter class lording over society from a mansion on the hill, where their paternalistic gestures inspired lock-step allegiance from those below. Jennifer R. Green's Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old South and David Williams's Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War challenge the view of slaveholders as a uniformed and unified class who effectively instilled class discipline. While both authors compel us to think deeply about the nature of class formation, identity, and political action, neither historian fully succeeds in reconfiguring the ways we conceive of Southern class relations before or during the Civil War. Williams's work is especially unsatisfying, for his discussion of class relations suffers from the most simplistic economic determinism. Members of the Confederate ruling class, in his eyes, were only capable of caring about their narrow self-interests—defending slavery, preserving wealth, and escaping military service—whereas poor white Southerners are seen as victims of class exploitation who derail Confederate military operations. Williams turns a complicated story of the Confederate home front into a twisted morality play that would only make sense if it were performed in a Roman coliseum where the powerful routinely give the thumbs down to the helpless before cheering enthusiastically as the poor victims, despite putting up a herculean fight, get devoured. Green, on the other hand, offers a far more sophisticated analysis of Southern class relations before the Civil War. She reveals new dimensions of the antebellum social order that complicate the traditional depiction of the two-tier class system of slaveholders and non-slaveholders. She finds a vibrant and influential middling order of young students at military colleges who stood on the periphery of slaveholder power in the 1850s. Unlike Williams, Green does not reach extreme conclusions when she encounters disagreements among Southern whites. Rather, she looks at these disputes as opportunities to explain how class differences forced all parties to negotiate power, even if compromise meant embracing new values that seemed incongruous with human bondage.

Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old South overturns the dated notion that military schools were nurseries for perpetual adolescents who entered the adult world desperate to duel or to find a friendly game of eye-gouging. Green demonstrates that military schools in the 1850s attracted ambitious and highly driven young men who desired a curriculum that would facilitate the professional needs of a middling class. While many of the South's more established...