Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg (review)

?6?CIVIL WAR HISTORY widow before marrying a planter in Newton County. Her brother-in-law was determined to make a success of his practice, apparently viewing Georgians as sources to fleece. "Before we go home we must skin these lazy Georgians," he wrote to his brother before leaving. In a Southern world, Dolly was a Northerner who embraced the Southern way of life. Her independence as a schoolteacher was too attractive to give up. After she married Thomas Bürge in 1850, she did quit teaching to raise his four children and take on the duties of a plantation mistress. She kept a record of the slave families' deaths and births on the plantation. After Thomas's death in 1 858, she continued to run a tight ship on the plantation, and it stayed profitable . Relationships with the slaves are portrayed in detail and support the idea that many plantation owners truly cared about their slaves' welfare. Here is a glimpse of slavery recorded as it was, with no current political slant. It shows the devotion of both master and slave to each other. In 1 864, the plantation was ransacked and partially burned. Dolly stayed on the land and remarried Rev. William Parksin 1 866. Her third husband died in 1873. The diary served "personal record-keeping and soul-searching purposes." While the early part of the diary is tedious and slow, it does give detail in the 1 864 entries when Union troops are passing through. The most obvious fault with the book is that the author does not have a good grasp of the war. The daily entries are sometimes sparse in the recording of events and their significance. Carter could have resolved this somewhat with detailed footnote entries. This is the third publication of thisjournal, and it was published in its entirety in 1962 by Dr. James I. Robertson. Carter leans heavily on Robertson's publication. She incorporates court records and other family correspondence into a detailed introduction and epilogue. Her editing of the journal itself is good, keeping the original phonetic spellings and misspellings of the writer, which preserves the diarist's own idiosyncrasies. While she includes many family photographs, unfortunately many of the subjects are not sufficiently introduced to us to endear themselves to the reader. Mauriel P. Joslyn Sparta, Georgia Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil WarLynchburg. By Steven ElliotTripp. (NewYork: NewYork University Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 344· $45-00) Drawing on a large body of census records, church documents, court minute books, newspapers, manuscript collections, and secondary sources, StevenTripp analyzes how the residents of Lynchburg, Virginia, reacted to the disruptive effects of civil war and reconstruction. He argues that the city's social structure fragmented under the pressures of war and emancipation because blacks and BOOK REVIEWSl6l lower-class whites repudiated the paternalistic control of conservative elites. Three new developments characterized race and class relations in postwar Lynchburg: class antagonism between white laborers and civic leaders, black collective activism, and interracial violence.Arguing that antebellum elites failed to reclaim their prewar stature, Tripp joins historians who locate the origins of the New South in the social conflicts of the postwar period. Tripp argues that paternalistic social relations characterized antebellum Lynchburg. Slaveholders extended credit to neighbors, patronized local artisans , succored the poor, and demanded deference from slaves. In exchange, white laborers supported slavery and the poUtical rule ofelites, and blacks rarely rebelled. Although poor whites were restless under paternalism and sought autonomy in leisure or equality in evangelical religion, they rallied to the Confederate cause during secession and affirmed elite leadership. Paternalism broke down during war and reconstruction. Volunteer soldiers resented serving under incompetent local elites. Poor whites resented wealthy speculators who hoarded goods andjacked up prices. Racial friction intensified when Lynchburg's tobacco factories shut down, making many slaves quasifree . City leaders proved unable to stem crime, relieve poverty, or sustain support for war. After Robert E. Lee's surrender atAppomattox twenty miles away, Lynchburg tumbled into chaos and civic leaders retreated to their mansions until the Yankee troops arrived. In the postwar period, elites struggled to wrest control of city politics from Republicans, control free black...