The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985 (review)

book reviews191 it also has restrained her conclusions. The end point of the study, the conclusion of presidential reconstruction, serves her well in discussions of political matters; but it also forces premature closure in areas such as economy and religion. For example, she treats only the beginnings of a massive transformation of the black church because the years she studies bear little relationship to the chronology ofblack church history. In a book examining only two years ofone state's history, it is incumbent on the author to place her work in a broad historiographical context. Too often Alexander neglects this responsibility. For instance, she puzzles over the surprising fairness in the courts' treatment ofblacks without considering the flood of recent scholarship on nineteenth-century southern legal history. And she examines the beginnings of sharecropping without addressing the numerous studies ofdie southern postbellum economy. Nevertheless, this study vastly extends our knowledge of Reconstruction North Carolina and will be an important building block for a muchneeded comprehensive history ofthe state during that era. Marc W Kruman Wayne State University The University ofGeorgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985. By Thomas G. Dyer. (Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1985. Pp. 448. $35.00.) This history of the nation's oldest state university (depending on whether one reckons age by charter or opening date) strikes a middle course between older institutional histories which mainly narrated chronology, events, and personalities, and the newer intellectual history. Thomas Dyer places events at Georgia within a broader state and national context, but still follows a basically narrative approach. Five of his fifteen chapters deal with the University of Georgia during the antebellum and Civil War years. Like most institutions founded in the eighteenth century, the university was religious without being narrowly sectarian. Revivalist George Whitefield and other ministers played a major role in its creation, and Presbyterian ministers dominated both administration and faculty in its early years. The university adopted a classical curriculum typical ofits day, though pressure to provide more professional and applied education began to transform the school as early as the 1830s and 1840s. In fact this battle between traditional classicists and innovators dominates Dyer's story diroughout much ofthe nineteenth century. Other themes include the elitism of both students and faculty, characterized by student rowdiness and public resentment. Graduates usually became planters, lawyers, physicians, and clergymen. Because most students represented wealthier classes and were Presbyterians, plain folk of Baptist and Methodist persuasion often attacked the university. Dyer attributes this animosity both to a pervasive anti-intellectualism and sectarian 192CIVIL WAR HISTORY rivalries between Baptist and Methodist colleges, such as Mercer and Emory, and the University ofGeorgia. Although the university closed briefly during the Civil War, the campus escaped the physical damage that crippled other schools. And in fact Chancellor Lipscomb, who took the reins in 1860, made the Reconstruction years some of the most memorable in university history by modernizing the curriculum, instituting the elective system, and enthusiastically accepting land-grant money for agricultural education. Many tiiemes that emerge in later years are familiar ones in the history of southern higher education. The legislature provided little funding because of a regressive tax system. Governors such as Eugene Talmadge meddled in internal affairs and succeeded in costing the school its accreditation. Farm Bureau activities exacerbated tensions between agriculture and other parts of the faculty. Athletics became a separate fiefdom beyond administrative control. Perhaps most revealing of how universities, like churches, are wedded to their culture is Dyer's narrative ofthe integration crisis of the 1960s. The only noble actors in this drama are the courageous and tenacious black students and a bold handful offaculty. It is not a pretty story. Thomas Dyer has told an honest story in workmanlike style. Though judicious pruning would have improved die writing, this history has more value for historians of southern culture than for fanatical devotees of Wallace Butts and Georgia football. Auburn University J.Wayne Flynt ...