In His Image, But . . . Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910 (review)

170CIVIL WAR HISTORY than they have previously gained. Unfortunately he does not elaborate on this point extensively. Though generally a very competent and thoughtful work a few flaws exist which this reviewer found annoying. The lack of footnotes in a book essentially for specialists is especially disturbing. Also, Kutler occasionally overstates an argument at one point and then refutes it a few pages later—witness his statement on page 56 that the Marshall court "had invariably interpreted the contract clause of the Constitution in such a way as to restrain state interference with property rights." Yet eight pages later Kutler is describing the Marshall opinion in Providence Bank v. Billings as a major precedent for Taney's Charles River Bridge opinion. Later, as indicated, Kutler emphasizes similarities between Marshall and Taney in questions involving state contracts and charters. In addition, Kutler occasionally slips up on a matter of fact or omits material that would have further illuminated his study. It is not correct to say that Thomas M. Cooley "was as devoted as Webster, Story and Kent to the protection of property and the enforcement of contract." Unlike these gentlemen Cooley deplored the Dartmouth College decision. Kutler might also have reinforced his argument for the ubiquity of concern for using the law to promote economic progress had he noted that Justice Lemuel Shaw, who had been counsel for the Charles River Bridge Company in Massachusetts, later ruled consistently in favor of railroad rights as opposed to those of more established forms of property. But these objections are actually minor ones to a most useful and thought-provoking study. Future students of court cases and doctrines would do well to copy Kutler's energy in investigating past arguments and records. They might also usefully emulate his willingness to use contemporary issues to illuminate the meaning of past events. Phillip S. Paludan University of Kansas In His Image, But . . . Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910. By H. Shelton Smith. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1972, Pp. x, 318. $8.50.) Shelton Smith demonstrates that retrogression in the intellectual sphere is as likely as progress, and that even men of good will can be racists. This study of racism in southern religion can be divided into four sections . The years immediately after the Revolution brought great emphasis upon the rights of man. Idealistic ministers challenged slavery, and some denominations even expelled slaveowners. American Protestantism was not of one mind, however, and southern racial Christianity received a powerful stimulus from northern evangelical conservatives. Unfortunately for abolitionism, many of its ministe- BOOK REVIEWS171 rial champions tended to be heretical on matters of theology, causing northern conservatives to ally with southern clergymen against both abolition and theological "liberalism." Smith argues persuasively that the motivation of northern conservatives was not so much their desire for denominational unity as their own racism. The author also reveals the intense politicizing of southern evangelical ministers which provides a needed corrective to the otherworldly stereotype which southern Christianity and its critics share in common. The third era discussed is Reconstruction, and the author's most controversial conclusion is his flat assertion that white racism was the "greatest single factor in moving black people to establish churches of their own" (p. 228). While it is true that southern evangelicals were racists and that black evangelicals separated, the cause and effect relationship is not so certain as Smith surmises. As many historians have demonstrated, the black's desire to control his own institutions was at least as powerful a motive in this separation. Smith also emphasizes that developments in the North again reinforced racism in the South. Smith divides southern clerical thought between 1877 and 1910 into a predominant racist pattern which contained two elements. Extremists considered the Negro inherently inferior and opposed any attempt to help him, while moderates agreed on his inferiority but favored educational uplift. Standing outside this dominant position were a handful of religious iconoclasts who rejected the doctrine of Negro racial inferiority. This is a solid study of a dismal subject. Wayne Flynt Samford University Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868. Edited by John Q. Anderson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Pp. xxviii, 400. $8...