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BOOK REVIEWS177 this study, as Leonard Richards first suggested in his 1970 study ofanti-abolition mobs, were fueled by precisely the sort ofeconomic and cultural factors Grimsted wants to discuss at a future date. Although mobs invariably had specific objectives , individual rioters were motivated by a wide range of incentives, ideals, and anxieties that can rarely be neatly categorized. Academic authors are accustomed to having their wishes ignored by scholarly presses, but Oxford here carries this unhappy tradition to a new low. By employing a smaller type, the press squeezed forty-six tiny lines onto every page, which, together with the prohibitively high price, indicates that the editors (wrongly) believe this lively, eloquent study to have no general appeal. The backjacket exists only to advertise other Oxford titles, an offensive gimmick no popular author would ever have to endure. Professor Grimsted deserves better. American Mobbing is a smart, passionate examination of an unusually contentious era. Scholars and general readers interested in prewar America will wish to read it, and they will much enjoy the time spent doing it. Douglas R. Egerton Le Moyne College Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana's Florida Parishes 1810-1899. By Samuel C. Hyde Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997· Pp. xv, 288. $34.95.) Pistols andPolitics looks backward and surveys the history ofLouisiana's Florida Parishes from the colonial period through Reconstruction to explain the violence that gripped the piney-woods region of these parishes in the late nineteenth century. The author's central contention is that planter dominance had been so pervasive that piney-woods residents proved incapable of governing themselves in the postwar period. To support this thesis, Hyde devotes more than 60 percent of the book to an analysis ofthe region prior to 1877. The model projected presents a community exploited by a planter aristocracy who conspired to manipulate the White majority by creating and then playing upon fears of common enemies. This chicanery was compounded, Hyde contends, when planters suppressed ideological and cultural mores peculiar to the White majority in the piney-woods—mores that placed a premium upon individual liberty and honor. These Machiavellian machinations resulted, according to Hyde, in a perverted form of Jeffersonianism that led piney-woods residents to reject all government and to embrace anarchy. That a plantation aristocracy dominated Louisiana in the antebellum period can hardly be denied. The details that Hyde gathers to explain the nature of that domination are seriously flawed. Fundamental and pivotal terminology is devoid of definition. References to "plain folks," "commoners," and "the masses" abound, without the least attempt to establish criterion for these designations. I78CIVIL WAR HISTORY Hyde's planters fared no better. His "slaveholding elite" seems to encompass all who owned slaves, and their power swings bewilderingly from "absolute" (88) to "always . . . precarious" (190). Distinctions and connections between the delta planters and those in the piney-woods are equally confused, vacillating between empathy and enmity without adequate explanation. Hyde's formula of planter exploitation ignores key factors that formed the core of Louisiana's antebellum political experience. He denies the importance ofAmerican unity prior to 1845, disregards the endemic hostility between New Orleans and the country parishes, and ignores personalities as well as the influence of parties and factional divisions. Contradictions and generalizations compound omissions. Examples include inaccurate census figures based on 3-percent samples in sparsely populated parishes; an alleged colonial legacy dominated by various desperadoes who somehow managed to weaken unionism during the Civil War; and a tenaciously independent, but apparently homogeneous population, who ran amuck in the postwar period. Evidence does not indicate that residents demonstrated any greater commitment to honor and individual liberty than any other rural Southerners. Formula history invariable controls and misdirects evidence. Hyde capably chronicles conflicts that developed into personal and family feuds in the postwar period. Although he failed to place the piney-woods within the context of a time when Louisiana became a byword for violence and corruption in the nation , he provided sound evidence to explain the feuds. The study is seriously marred by his persistent attempts to force a pattern and identify the roots of this violence in earlier times. That planter...

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