Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS77 Cato as well. Whether presenting Jeremiah, or Cato, or just plain Walter Gresham—Calhoun's study adds to ourunderstanding ofa fascinatingera. Allan Spetter Wright State University Proslavery:A History ofthe Defense ofSlavery in America, 1701-1840. By Larry E. Tise. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Pp. xix, 501. $40.00.) Most historians believe that their books have value because either they break new ground or they offer a new perspective. It is also fair to say that many think their scholarly predecessors have been misguided or even wrong. And certainly all writers hope that reviewers share their views and judge their books along a spectrum ranging from seminal to significant contributions to knowledge. Larry Tise is, however, among the few to announce publicly in his introduction that every other historian who has investigated his subject has failed. Tise has little use for the historians who have grappled with the subject of proslavery; in his opinion they have utterly "misunderstood" (p. xiv) its mysteries. According to Tise they have done such a miserablejob that when he got into the sources nothing turned out as it should have. After such a self-congratulatory introduction one immediately wonders whether or not Tise will demonstrate both the scholarly flabbiness ofothers and his own intellectual muscle. He has written the first book-length study of proslavery since William S. Jenkins more than a half century ago. That fact may surprise many, but even with all the work done on slavery in the past twenty-five years no one during that time published a book devoted to the proslavery argument, though the subject has been treated in parts of books and a number of articles. Tise has also been thorough; including Northern as well as Southern materials, he has probably read more proslavery writings than anyone else. Tise's book has undoubted strengths. In pushing the chronology of proslavery back to the colonial period he clearly establishes that proslavery antedated the nineteenth century, not to say the 1 830s. He also extends the border ofproslavery in his conclusive demonstration that Northerners contributed significantly to the case for slavery. In addition Tise connects proslavery with the larger ideological currents prevailing in the United States, marked particularly by a fundamental shift toward conservatism in the 1830s. In doing so Tise argues that proslavery was neither exotic nor idiosyncratic but rather inextricably part of the intellectual environment. Although Tise surely makes positive contributions, he exhibits excessive enthusiasm for his new history ofproslavery. Here I will only point to a few 78CIVIL WAR HISTORY examples. Much of his evidence for Northern involvement in proslavery, especially by Northern clerics, comes from Northerners who had become residents of the South. These people provide Tise but a weak foundation, forjust as surely as they brought an intellectual and social wardrobe with them on theirjourney southward, they added enormously to that wardrobe in their new home. In addition his case for what he terms the "proslavery center" that dominated national thought between the 1 830s and 1 860 has a disturbing abstractness about it. Tise's proslavery center has no connection with politics, which gives it an unreal quality. After all, a vast difference separated John C. Calhoun from Martin Van Buren, yet both would fit comfortably into Tise's proslavery center. According to Tise's definition, one could even find in this proslavery center any constitutional conservative and believer in social order, even an Abraham Lincoln. Also Tise's argument that Southerners made quite limited responses to abolition in the crisis year of 1835 overlooks completely the first Democratic-Whig campaign in the slave states. In 1835 and 1836 in the South abolition had an absolutely critical role in the public contest for the presidency. Thus a vigorous , widespread reaction pervaded the South in a very public way. For Tise, one overriding theme explains the construct of nineteenthcentury proslavery—conspiracy theory. According to Tise, the conspiracy theory gained its ascendency over proslavery through the agency of Federalist thinkers and their legacy. In Tise's view these profoundly conservative men led the momentous intellectual shift that in the 1 830s turned American ideology away from the natural rights philosophy of the...