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356CIVIL WAR HISTORY lification era and on the eve of the Civil War, Love of Order is the first book-length work on the secession crisis of 1850-1851 in fifty years. And it admirably meets the need for a new study. Initial examination of the work might suggest an imbalance of coverage , for only 70 of its 190 pages of text deal directly with the two-year crisis. But a closer reading will remove most objections about the lengthy background, aimed at showing why SouthCarolina was, among the slaveholding states, sui generis. The demography of the state, marked from an early day by a black majority, created anxieties among whites in a degree far greater than elsewhere. The aristocratic political structure, which gave to the legislature control over all other parts of government, enabled the gentry planters to create and sustain a consensus that made the defense of slavery the paramount goal. The isolation of the state during nullification showed that other southern states did not share its degree of anxiety, and the image of unique radicalism was a central legacy in the following years. Thus Calhoun was unable to unite the South in a radical response to the Wilmot Proviso or stave off the forces of compromise in 1850. The distinctive contribution of Love of Order, in this context, is its richly documented account of the struggle within the state among three groups. The "secessionists" wanted the state to leave the Union at once. The "Unionists" argued, by contrast, that the protection of the national government gave the best security to slavery. The "cooperationists" believed the defense of slavery ultimately required a separate confederacy , but they opposed any unilateral action by the state at the time. Their victory in the elections of late 1851 thus meant, as James Hammond put it, that a "love of order" (p. 187) overrode the impulse to revolutionary action without the concert of other states. But Love of Order makes it clear that the nature of the consensus over the goal of defending slavery in 1851 could also extend to a consensus over revolutionary means by the end of the decade. Close students of South Carolina will doubtless find particular points to challenge; and the general reader might wish the narrative of events had been given a somewhat sharper focus. But Love of Order will be welcomed as an important work, rich in texture and convincing in its overall argument. If Peterson's Olive Branch and Sword focuses on the arts of compromise, this work points just as surely to other aspects in the national experience which defy the peaceful arts. Major L. Wilson Memphis State University From the Old South to the New: Essays on the Transitional South. Edited by Walter J. Fraser, Jr. and Winfred B. Moore, Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. Pp. xiii, 286. $35.00.) The nineteen essays in this volume were chosen for publication from BOOK REVIEWS357 among the over one hundred papers presented at The Citadel Conferences on the South in 1978 and 1979. As is the nature of thebeast, they include "think pieces" by eminent historians, excerpts from recently completed Ph.D. dissertations, and parts of works in progress by authors who have already published at least one book. The editors have divided the essays somewhat arbitrarily into eight sections. Each section contains a brief introduction that summarizes the main points of the articles and places them in a broader context, though this latter role is better performed in an especially useful fifteen page bibliographical essay. The overall quality of the essays is well above that found in most anthologies, but this is not surprising given the high quality of the papers and participants at the two conferences. The volume thus provides an excellent status report onwhere wehave been and where we are heading in the study of the New South. What emerges most clearly is the current preoccupation with the question of continuity vs. changein the shift from the Old South to the New, particularly for the years from 1850 to 1900 in the areas of race relations, leadership patterns, violence, and intellectual life. There is no consensus though there does seem to be...

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