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BOOK REVIEWS75 The appearance of this volume is cause to consider, however briefly, the contribution of Frank L. Owsley. Many would dispute a claim that Owsley was one of the seminal minds in southern historical scholarship ; I make no such assertion. Nevertheless, Owsley's contributions have been significant. We still rely on his work for our understanding of Confederate diplomatic history, and we remember it was he who first emphasized that the localism and states' rights, so important to the antebellum southern politicians, helped undermine their strivings for independence . More important stands the Owsley who focused attention on the antebellum yeoman farmer and who continued to preach that yeoman's gospel of agrarianism. Owsley's claims for the prosperity and centrality of the yeoman in the Cotton Kingdom have, from Fabian Linden to Eugene Genovese, been challenged and disproved. Yet with the yeoman he did forcefully introduce a more complex and realistic social order into a scene too-long monopolized by planter and slave alone. To give credence to their claims for the yeoman Owsley and his students turned to the manuscript census and local tax records. His opponents used these sources to disprove his large claims; now no one writes seriously about antebellum southern society without going to the manuscript census. Few espouse Owsley's agrarianism today. His world view seems, to our age, anachronistic; yet in holding to it firmly and articulately (it is appropriate, I think, that Andrew Lytle wrote the foreword to this book) Owsley became a part of the southern mind—a fit subject for study in trying to understand that complex phenomenon. The inescapable conclusion is that Frank L. Owsley left a rich historical legacy—and this book provides a first-rate introduction to it. William J. Cooper, Jr. Louisiana State University Oratory in the Old South, 1828-1860. Edited by Waldo W. Braden. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. Pp. 311. $10.00.) This volume, prepared under the auspices of the Speech Association of America (now called the Speech Communication Association), consists of ten essays by prominent rhetorical critics who attempt "to describe, analyze, and evaluate the peculiar rhetorical characteristics of a group of speakers and to discover how they used their public address as a means of political influence." The editor begins with an introduction that presents an overview of the book—its purpose and approach—and highlights and synthesizes the substance of each essay. He concludes that the oratory of the South between 1828 and 1860, though it does not fall into a common pattern in language, voice, and bodily action, may be characterized as a rhetoric of desperation. As various groups throughout the period took their turns 76CIVIL WAR HISTORY at public deliberation of the issues they met frustration, not being able to find ways of resolving "the conflict between national loyalties and state interests." In the lead essay, Ralph T. Eubanks describes and evaluates "The Rhetoric of the Nullifiers" between 1828 and 1833. He first inquires into the sociopolitical context of their rhetoric, finding that the Cotton Kingdom Culture was based on three values—liberty, honor, and eloquence . He next characterizes the pattern of strategies they used and finally the nature of their idiom which consisted of special pleading, conservatism, strong personal argument, and a "perspicuous" style. Merrill G. Christophersen's "The Anti-Nullifiers" is a lively narrative of the efforts of the opponents to delay and modify the movement to nullify. The Unionists' 'long struggle had been a battle with words spoken in courage by men well trained to speak." The third essay, "The Southern Whigs," by Robert G. Gunderson, carefully builds a composite picture of the Whigs who appealed to "old-line aristocrats" and who practiced "a grandiose" style but who "failed to rally a conservative national following dedicated to a peaceful adjustment." Lindsey S. Perkins uses a different approach in "The Moderate Democrats , 1830-1860." Selecting four notable men who differed sharply, he compares and contrasts their variety in background, temperament, goals, delivery, style, and reasoning. He illustrates by extensive quotation from their speeches. "John C. Calhoun's Rhetorical Method in Defense of Slavery," the fifth essay, by Bert E. Bradley and Jerry L. Tarver...

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