Middle Tennessee, 1775–1825: Progress and Popular Democracy on the Southwestern Frontier by Kristofer Ray (review)

BOOK REVIEWS statewide prohibition. Evangelicals also had to overcome limitations on political action imposed by the doctrine of the spirituality of the church,which was central to southern denominations' selfunderstand ing of how they differed from " politicized" northern churches. Antiliquor fervor also drove some evangelicals into supporting the Prohibition and Populist parties, endangering white Democratic political solidarity in the South. Only after the Populist challenge had passed could southern evangelical prohibitionists unite politically The basis of their unity was the perception that African American men posed a grave threat to southern society. Southern religious leaders were hopeful about the potential for the mental and moral advancement of African Americans in the 18805, but their optimism largely evaporated by the late 1890s. Prohibitionists le· arned that black voters would not necessarily support their crusade against liquor, and they began to believe that alcohol lay at the heart of the perceived threatening behavior of black men. By the turn of the century,prohibition and disfranchisement became the solutions for " the Negro problem." Sometimes the effects were stark and direct;for example, the 1906 Atlanta race riot aided the passage of st·atewide prohibition in Georgia in 1907. As white southerners increas ingly viewed liquor as the source of declining morals and behavior among black men, prohibition became the solution. Coker also contemplates the transformation of the southern conception of honor and the role of women in southern society as they contributed to the antiliquor crusade. Southern evangelicals in the closing decades of the nineteenth century successfully transformed the meaning of honor to make it compatible with evangelical moral rectitude. Meanwhile, the participation of women in the movement, primarily through the Women' s Christian Temperance Union, Doth reinforced and challenged the structured gender roles of the region ( 229). While ties to the suftrage movement tainted women' s prohibitionist activities,stacks of petitions in favor of prohibition delivered to state legislatures · and Congress gave women a political voice. Coker perhaps overstates his case by claiming tli, it " 110 other movement in American history so effectively broadened women's particip: ition in public and political discourse" ( 234), but the impact was real and profound. Ultimately,southern evangelical prohibitionists succeeded in achieving statewide legal prohibition by advocating the prohibition ofliquor as an appropriate goal for southern churches that was consistent with the demands of southern honor,protected southern white womanhood, cured political corruption, and provided a solution to the menace of African American men. By conforming it to the peculiarities of southern culture ( 231), they were able to assert national leadership in what had been an essentially Yankee reform movement. Coker has done a fine job of charting the strange career of prohibition in the land ofjim Crow. Daniel W. Stowell The Papers of Abraham Lincoln Springfield,Illinois Kristofer Ray.Middle Tennessee,17751825 : Progress and Popular Democracy on tbe Soutbwestern Frontier. Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press,2007. 236 pp. ISBN: 9781572335974 ( cloth), $ 41.00. Real estate booms and busts, political manipulation and military exploitation by the elite, and an uneasy electorateKristofer Ray addresses these matters SUMMER 2008 89 BOOK REVIEWS in Middle Tennessee, 17751825 , a study of political and economic change in Tennessee is it emerged from : 1 frontjer into the national mainstream. Supported in part by fellowships from The Filson Historical Society and the Tennessee Historical Society, Ray's study " clarifies the ways in which a broad southern community defined and came to grips with the question of'progress ( xviii). As in much of the transAppalachian west, land speculation fueled middle Tennessee's first settlement by whites and sparked conflict with the Cherokee and Chickasaw who claimed the region. Regillar warfare illarked the period from 1775 to 1796, as Native American warriors harassed the new stations and farmsteads and whites retaliated with scorched earth raids against Indian villages. Blacks brought as slaves to Tennessee experienced a brief period of relative liberty, bearing arms against the Indi·ans · and often traveling alone on their master s business. As a result, when Tennessee became a state in 1796, black frecholders g·ained voting privileges under a colorblind constitution and were allowed to particip·ate in the state' s militia. From 1777 to 1790, most legislators and county officers...