Benevolence Among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860 (review)

328CIVIL WAR HISTORY proslavery thought, will find no surprises here. Snay breaks no fresh ground but, to his credit, has systematically laid out the logic by which his group of clergy articulated a moral basis for slavery and championed the South against the "infidel" North. Here indeed is a reasoned argument in support of Thomas R. R. Cobb's assertion in the fateful spring of 1861 that 'This revolution has been accomplished mainly by the Churches." The role of many Southern churches in support of slavery and in fomenting secession is undeniable, but questions remain as to the larger claims made by Snay. When he speaks of the South, he most often is referring to the Lower South and, even here, to the more narrowly defined Carolina and Georgia lowcountry , the breeding ground of most of the clergy he examines. Thus, as evidenced by the clerical factionalism over slavery that David T. Bailey (Shadow on the Church [ 1 985]) documents for the Old Southwest in the 1 850s, one wonders just how solid clerical ranks were in defense of slavery across the South. As a result of a research design that deals exclusively with the public rhetoric of a small group of men with close ties to the planter elite, the pervasiveness of the proslavery gospel is asserted rather than proved. Did most slaveholders, to say nothing of common whites, defend human bondage in religious terms as a positive good? Though unlikely, perhaps they did, but in the absence of any probing oftheirprivate thoughts and feelings, we have no way ofknowing. And finally, is it really true that "Repentance of sin and conversion to a career of holiness , the central message of evangelicalism, gave order and meaning to the lives of all but a few Southern men and women, black as well as white" (3)? This is a tall order for any society at any time, and one looks in vain for the documentation to support it. This is a solid contribution to our understanding of how some Southerners felt themselves to be absolutely in the moral right in seceding from the Union. It also forces us to take seriously the role of religion in dividing antebellum Americans against themselves. William L. Barney University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Benevolence Among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860. By Barbara Bellows. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993, Pp. xvii, 217. $29.95.) This slim volume offers some tantalizing prospects. The reader is enticed by the promise that thebook will trace the shifting ideas, beliefs, and policies ofprominent Charlestonians toward their poorer white brethren. In the preface, Barbara Bellows announces that her work will trace "the change in the practice of poor relief and benevolence from romantic and paternalistic to systematic and impersonal " (xiv) in the city most closely identified with slavery in the Old South. The reader might, therefore, expect a cohesive and thorough assessment of the way in which Charleston's white elite grappled with poverty, ignorance, dis- BOOK REVIEWS329 ease, and family breakdown in that community. The consequences of such an examination would yield some penetrating insights into the issues ofclass, race, and gender. But this is not precisely what the book delivers. With only a nod toward the century that Charleston spent as a colonial city, Bellows focuses on the five decades prior to the Civil War. During those antebellum years she distinguishes —in a sometimes facile and often disjointed fashion—changes in attitudes and programs directed toward the poor. At the inception ofthat half-century, city leaders' benevolent views and policies initially mirrored those of their urban counterparts in such Northern cities as Boston. Then, for a time, there was a paradoxical coexistence of aggressive moral reform accompanied by more assertive proslavery pronouncements. By the 1 850s, as the defense of slavery became more militant, the commitment to the poor became more ambiguous. Finally in 1 860, any lingering indecisiveness in the impulse toward reform crumbled with the crisis over secession. In the process, Bellows offers some telling and revealing anecdotes on the neglect of children, the plight of women, and the confined roles of upper-class men and especially women. Then there...