Eros and Freedom in Southern Life and Thought (review)

190CIVIL WAR HISTORY the Breckinridge-Lane ticket terminated Joe Lane's long and theretofore triumphant political career and he limped back to Oregon to be greeted as traitor by all but supporters of the Confederacy. Hendrickson wisely has not written a biography of Joseph Lane. Readers interested in Lane's years in the Indiana legislature and his role in the Mexican War may consult the full-scale biography by Sister M. Margaret Jean Kelly, The Career of Joseph Lane, Frontier Politician (1942). However , in part because Hendrickson is the first to use die Lane Collection in die Lilly Library of Indiana University and in part because of die sophistication and balance of his appraisal, this is the fullest and most reliable treatment we have of Joseph Lane and his political career after he left Indiana. In this scholarly and readable book James Hendrickson ably combines biography and political analysis. He effectively exploits the rich correspondence of Oregon figures such as Asahel Bush, Matthew P. Deady, and James W. Nesmidi so as to deliver the full pungency of pioneer politics . One device might have made the narrative easier to follow: a cast of major characters complete with their political affiliations. Edwin R. Bingham University of Oregon Eros and Freedom in Southern Life and Thought. By Earl E. Thorpe. (Durham: Seeman Printery, 1967. Pp. xii, 210. $7.75.) This interpretive study, whose chief emphasis is upon the nineteendi century , argues diat freedom is the central tiieme of soutiiem history. Reorienting U. B. Phillips' thesis diat control of the Negro is southern history 's main thread, it argues diat slavery, "the utmost denial of the black man's freedom," was also "die utmost affirmation of die freedoms of white men." An important aspect of the white men's freedom was their sexual access to Negro women which, it is contended, helped to produce a "culture of nonrepression" in die Soudi and also demonstrated "affection" between the races. The desire of southern whites to protect their freedoms from die "germs of repression" spread by northern and southern opponents of slavery was a major cause of secession and Civil War. The evidence used to support these views is drawn from a wide range of works on soutiiem history and from a more limited number of psychological studies. Some of die book's viewpoints are wordiy of further consideration. It may well be true that "Uberai historians" have overstressed die hostiUty between antebellum blacks and whites and the irrationahty of die secessionist leaders. It would be difficult to deny the claim diat a psychoanalytical perspective might be valuable to historians of the Negro—or, for diat matter, to all historians. But a book so defective in historical method and presentation can do Uttle or nothing to sustain diese or other contentions. The sources cited, mosdy secondary, are often used in an arbitrary and BOOK REVIEWS191 highly selective way. Generalizations are quoted, like scriptural texts, with a frequent disregard for masses of evidence to the contrary in primary and odier secondary sources. For example, one paragraph pictures slaves as being loyal to their masters during the Civil War. The paragraph's factual content consists only of sweeping assertions quoted from Booker T. Washington and Virginius Dabney. In the process of differing with many other historical studies, there is some pummeling of straw men. For instance, a principal target is Stanley M. Elkins' Skvery, which compares the effects upon their subjects of American slave plantations and German concentration campe but specifically refuses to impute to the plantations, characterized as far more benevolent, any of the standards governing the camps. Despite Elkins' disclaimer, the Thorpe work bases much of its attempted refutation upon allegations that, in contrast to Nazi cruelty, the relationship between the American slave and master was often intimate and affectionate. While the book's reasoning is generally loose, its lapses of logic are especially evident in this discussion of interracial "affection" (defined as equivalent to "love"). On page eight it asserts, "A prime source and evidence of the affection which existed between the races is the many instances of sexual intercourse involving white men and slave women." But the next page admits that ". . . the greatest bar...