Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South: Louisa County, Virginia, 1860-1890, and: The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880 (review)

174CIVIL WAR HISTORY tant, whatever their motives for going to Britain, once there they devoted themselves to erecting a "moral cordon" around the United States, hoping simultaneously to isolate America from the world community and to unleash British popular opinion against slavery. Blackett further argues that blacks successfully translated British sentiment into considerable gains for the abolitionist movement and black America. They blunted American colonizationist efforts in Britain during the 1830s, helped thwart information of British-American sponsored proslavery , international religious organizations in the 1840s and, at the height of their influence (1848-54), secured vital support for an array of black-run institutions and abolitionist societies at home. As central to Blackett's analysis is his examination of how blacks built a "well-oiled" propaganda machine to shape British opinion. He pays particular attention to black domination of the antislavery lecture circuit and argues convincingly that blacks enjoyed special entry to all classes of British society. Blackett attributes black appeal to the authenticity and eloquence of their lecture presentations and to their determination to focus speeches on racial issues not on the sectarian debates that had factionalized American antislavery in 1840 and had partially spilled into Britain. Black speakers (even those nominally associated with one American antislavery group or another) provided Britishers with a "third alternative" to droll white ideologues. Blackett's work is generally a well-conceived and much-needed appraisal but it is not without flaws. He does not thoroughly examine how blacks helped create the very lecture circuit for which they became a "third alternative," and he sometimes underestimates the role of the fugitive slave speaker on that circuit. Blackett offers only tentative answers to previous historical debates about American abolitionism in Britain and does not add to Miller's superb analysis of black emigrationists. Jeffery S. Rossbach Meriden, Connecticut Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South: Louisa County, Virginia , 1860-1890. By Crandall A. Shifflett. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. Pp. xvii, 159. $12.00.) The Reshaping of PL·ntation Society: The Natchez District, 18601880 . By Michael Wayne. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Pp. xii, 226. $22.50.) As the subtitles of the books suggest, both are case studies of different regions in the South. Despite the differences in regions analyzed, both Crandall A. Shifflett and Michael Wayne address similar issues in their respective books: 1) Did paternalism survive Emancipation? 2) Was there continuity in the local elite between the antebellum and post- BOOK REVIEWS175 bellum periods? and, 3) How did Emancipation influence labor relations ? Shifflett's approach is that of a social historian. In this tradition he concerns himself with all aspects of community life. Wayne on the other hand, is more specifically concerned with examining the economic changes in plantation life wrought by the Civil War. Both authors argue that paternalism was not as prevalent after the Civil War. No longer did the ruling elite consider that the welfare of all blacks was their obligation. Wayne chronicles the overall decline in the use of benefits but neglects what appears to be the crucial distinction between the use of benefits in the two periods. As Shifflett argues, planters now doled out benefits as a quid pro quo for loyal labor services as opposed to a pre-Civil War obligation. Unfortunately Shifflett appears inconsistent. At times he describes the patronage system— Shifflett's term for paternalism in the postbellum period—as an exchange relationship, while at other times he implies that only patrons benefitted from the system. Neither author recognizes the important difference for motivating labor from conferring selective benefits as a reward for loyal labor as opposed to the use of universal benefits unrelated to work effort. With respect to the issue of the persistence of the elite after the Civil War, both authors use data on the distribution of wealth and information on family holdings to demonstrate that, although former slaveholders suffered considerable reductions in their wealth from the Civil War, they retained their dominant position in the economic and social hierarchy. Wayne shows how the elite managed to retain title to their land partly as a result of a lack of demand for their debt-ridden land...