Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South

Foreword

Six years ago I took a graduate seminar on comparative slavery from one of the foremost living scholars of American history, Professor Eugene D. Genovese. Although I would enjoy engaging in a bit of revisionist history and say that I was not intimidated by his reputation, I cannot, for I was acutely aware that the man who sat at the head of the table had set the research agenda in the field. My anxiety was scarcely alleviated when he returned my first esssay to me. "This paper," his extensive comments began, "is, to saythe least, infuriating." Iam proud to say that I emerged from his seminar unscathed, ego somewhat intact, and undoubtedly a better historian. Over the years my appreciation of his talents as a scholar have grown immeasurably. Moreover, I have developed a deep fondnessfor Professor Genovese and I would like to think that I infuriate him less in my now wiser, more temperate days. It was, perhaps, most fitting that Professor Genovese delivered the Forty-first Annual Lamar Memorial Lectures, "A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South," from the podium of the Baptist minister Jesse Mercer, one of the University's founders. As Genovese notes, while the sectional crisis intensified during Foreword Xll F O R E W O R D the 18503, Southern divines argued that the South could defend the institution of slavery against attacks from the "infidel" abolitionists only by fulfilling their duties as Christian masters. The Lamar Committee thanks Professor Genovese for offering these challenging, provocative lectures. Our students were surely the beneficiaries of his committed interest in and engagement with the mind of the Southern slaveholding class. The committee also wishes to thank the family of the late Eugenia Blount Lamar, whose generous bequest makes this lecture series possible. Personally I wish to thank John Shelton Reed, a former Lamar Lecturer, and Dale Reed for making the occasion of these Lamar Lectures exceedingly enjoyable. It is not often that the former landlords (and good friends) of the invited speaker are on hand, and I must note that Professor Reed trumped us all by delivering one of the wittiest introductions to a lecture in recent memory. I also wish to thank the members of the committee, each of whom did the difficult work long before I joined Mercer's faculty and the Lamar Committee: Mrs. R. Lanier Anderson III, Michael Cass, Fred Hobson, Hubert McAlexander, Wayne Mixon, Karen Orchard, George Tindall, and Henry Warnock. Sarah E. Gardner for the Lamar Memorial Lecture Committee ...