Wrestlin' Jacob: A Portrait of Religion in the Old South (review)

BOOK REVIEWS179 but he has revealed little about his range of influence upon the conduct of the war, or about his reactions to a conflict that had obvious racial overtones. Perhaps fewer sources were available on this subject than on the topic of Parker's leadership in the Indian Service, but surely Armstrong could have gleaned enough information from the volume of material available on the war to accomplish more than the preparation of a chronicle about Parker's pedestrian service as a corresponding secretary. Armstrong's failure to balance personal chronicle with interpretive assessment of his subject's influence on national affairs evidently stems from educational background. Trained as a clergyman, and not as an historian, the author had not mastered fundamental techniques of biography before he began. Yet the product ofhis effort merits attention from a wide variety of prospective readers. Scholars, students, and history buffs all will appreciate a new publication about a prominent Indian leader on whom there has been no biographical study in more than sixty years. The text is well written. It brings to light new information on Parker's personal life, and most of all it reveals the magnitude of effort that was required of a Native American who chose to bridge the gap between cultures in the climb to success by the nonIndian standards of the nineteenth century. Herbert T. Hoover University of South Dakota Wrestlin Jacob: A Portrait of Religion in the Old South. By Erskine Clarke. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979. Pp. xv, 207. $6.95, paper.) Perhaps the best of the recentbooks on the history ofSouthern religion is Albert J. Raboteau's Sfove Religion. While Raboteau's book is the most comprehensive study of this subject, Erskine Clarke's Wrestlin Jacob is a very readable introduction for general readers and for scholars a supplement to SL·ve Religion. Wrestlin Jacob explains the essence of the interaction of black and white Southern religion before the Civil War by examining two efforts of white preachers to share Christianity with slaves—Charles Colcock Jones in Liberty County, Georgia and several preachers in Charleston, South Carolina. By using case studies of rural and urban, white missions to slaves, Clarke presents more detailed, personal pictures of white and black religious leaders, practices, and attitudes than usually appear in general studies. His descriptions of city, countryside, and the sabbaths or worship services in each are outstanding. Like the best case studies, Wrestlin Jacob transcends its narrow focus by dealing with salient white preachers—Jones, the "father" of plantation missions, and Charleston's leading preachers, William Capers, John Bachman, Thomas Smyth, and John L. Girardeau. By 180CIVIL WAR HISTORY describing the achievements and ultimate failure of these church leaders, Clarke reveals the essential irony of ante-bellum, Southern, white Christianity—the insufficiency of well-meaning paternalism in a repressive, slave society. With insight and balance, Clarke analyzes the varied black responses to white missionaries. While urban blacks had more opportunities to shape religion to meet their needs, both groups accepted the labors of the whitemissionaries, but saw through the whites' paternalism and used the limited freedom offered them through religion to shape positiveself images, train leaders (especially Morris Brown and Daniel Payne), strengthen black family and community ties, andlay the foundations for future independent black churches. Despite the common assumption that freedmen assumed their masters' names, Clarke showed that when one white-controlled, black church allowed slaves to record their surnames on the church roll, 85 per centchose surnames other than those of their owners'. If Clarke's study has a flaw, it is in not dealing with the question of the survival of elements of African culture. Otherwise, his solid scholarship, empathy with the strengths and weaknesses of whites and blacks, and vivid writing make Wrestling' Jacob a classic in Southern black, white, and religious history. Robert G. Sherer Wiley College Planters and the Making of a 'New South': Class, Politics, and Development in North Carolina, 1865-1900. By Dwight B. Billings, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Pp. xiii, 284. $15.00.) The character of post-bellum Southern society has become the focus of intense historical debate. C. Vann Woodward established...