The South and the Sectional Conflict (review)

BOOK REVIEWS271 many individuals could have been condensed, repetitions appear in later parts, and the basic points could have been presented in less space. Its abundant detaü and its treatment of many humanitarian and ideological subjects between 1800 and 1865, however, make it a valuable study for any scholar of the Civü War era. Warren F. Kuehl University of Akron The South and the Sectional Conflict. By David M. Potter. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Pp. xv, 321. $7.50.) This thoughtful book consists of eleven essays. All but two were written in the decade between 1958 and 1968, yet only one (that on John Brown) has not been previously published. Professor Potter has arranged his essays in three groups. The first examines that old but fascinating enigma: what are the qualities that have given the South its distinctive character? He concedes that much arrant nonsense has been written and uttered about the distinctiveness of the South. Yet he is convinced that in important and real ways the South has been different , and still is different, from the rest of America. He analyzes the ideas of leading historians on this question and seems to find the greatest merit in those of U. B. Phillips (whose most enduring idea is widely known, i.e., the "central theme of Southern history" is that the fixed purpose of southern whites is and has always been to assure that the South "shall be and remain a white man's country" ) , and acknowledges that what liberal historians nowadays object to is "not in fact the accuracy of Phillips' conclusion; it was rather the lack of moral indignation in his statement of it" (11). Dr. Potter believes that several features of southern culture—"Southern conservatism, Southern hierarchy, the cult of chivalry, the unmachined civüization, the folk society, the rural character of the life, the clan values rather than the commercial values—all had a deeply significant distinctiveness" (68). Yet these were not unique to the South; and the efforts of some historians to prove that the South had a separate culture all its own have led to very "paltry results" (69). One painful dilemma of life in the South nowadays is that white southerners cannot bear to abandon the traditional rural and biracial standards of the antebellum South, yet are determined to enjoy all the material gains of industrial urban America. "The South has been democratic as well as aristocratic, fond of 'flush times' and booms as well as of tradition ; it has lusted for prosperity, bulldozers, and progress, whüe cherishing the values of stabüity, religious orthodoxy, and rural life" (30). Professor Potter has no "central theme" of his own, and says that nothing would kill further development in the field of southern history more quickly than universal agreement upon some fixed formula. "It 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY would be as bad if all theologians had agreed upon the nature of the Trinity" (31). The second section, like the first, contains three essays. They describe —all too briefly, considering their merit—( 1 ) what historians have said about the causes of the Civil War; (2) the Lincoln theme in American historical writing; and (3) some of the opportunities for study and writing still to be cultivated or opened up in the field of southern history. The third section, consisting of five essays, weighs some key questions (three dealing with the North rather than with the South) during the years 1859-1865. First, were any of John Brown's friends Negroes, and did he consult Negroes in laying his plans for the attack on Harper 's Ferry in 1859? The answer is no; and "perhaps the most convincing proof that he lived in the 'private world' of an insane man" was his failure to consult Negroes and his refusal even to listen to the few with whom he did talk. "AU he did was talk. He did not listen at all" (215). This fact ought to contain its own lesson for today's "activists." Second, just what did Horace Greeley mean in his famous editorial of November 9, 1860, when he wrote: "if the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better...