An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918

8. American Negro Slavery: The Triumph of the New Proslavery Argument

8 American Negro Slavery: The Triumph of the New Proslavery Argument Blacks had no more formidable opponent in their fight against the new prosIavery argument than the pioneer white historian Ulrich B. Phillips (1877-1934). Phillips dominated slavery scholarship in the years before World War I and rose in stature to become regarded as far and away the leading expert on the subject up to the 1950s. Phillips's writings epitomized the merger of postbellum proslavery ideology and turn-of-the-century "scientific" historical method. A native of Georgia, Phillips defended his section from neoabolitionist attacks long after Appomattox, and urged his fellow white southerners to thwart the exploitation of their region by northern capitalists. He considered the South a section distinct from the rest of the country, the product of "natural organic life," not "forces of perversity." In upholding his region's past and present, Phillips drew upon the best "scientific" historical training then available. Schooled in William A. Dunning's seminar at Columbia University, Phillips worshiped at the shrine of primary sources. His generation believed that "objective," nonpartisan history resulted from allowing the facts to speak for themselves. "The historian's chief concern," he wrote early in his career, "is with facts, their authenticity and accuracy; and interpretation is a secondary consideration." Yet Phillips's blatant proslavery interpretation-his assemblage of the "facts" pertaining to the peculiar institution--earned him the reputation as the most articulate and the chief scholarly spokesman for the new proslavery argument. He, more than any other writer, combined sectional and racial 240 The Formative Period of American Slave Historiography bias under the imprimatur of "objective" historical scholarship. In spite of his defense of slavery, Phillips made lasting contributions to our understanding of slavery. His work demands careful attention both for its proslavery content and its role in the ongoing slavery debate. 1 I Phillips was born in 1877 in the western Georgia town of LaGrange, not far from the Alabama border. His father came from yeoman lowermiddle -class stock, but his mother, whom Phillips considered his constant "comrade and source ofinspiration," had a plantation background. Before the Civil War her family had owned 1500 acres of land and twenty-four slaves in Troup County, Georgia. Phillips once recalled that "a sympathetic understanding of plantation conditions was my inevitable heritage from my family and from neighbors, white and black, in the town of LaGrange. " On another occasion Phillips explained how his knowledge of plantation conditions stemmed largely from his own "observations in post-bellum times." In the early 1890s the Phillips family moved to the site of the first capital of Georgia, Milledgeville. In 1891, their son entered the Tulane Preparatory School in New Orleans . Two years later Phillips, "an ungainly, retiring, country boy," enrolled in the University of Georgia in Athens. He stayed at that institution for seven years, earning a bachelor's degree in 1897 and a master's degree in 1899.2 Phillips's mentor at Georgia, John H. T. McPherson, had roots reaching back to Johns Hopkins and its famous seminar on slavery. In 1890 McPherson had completed his dissertation on the history of Liberia under Herbert Baxter Adams. While still working on his master's degree under McPherson, Phillips attended the 1898 summer term at the University of Chicago, where he enrolled in a seminar offered by Frederick Jackson Turner, then a visiting professor from the University of Wisconsin . Phillips found inspiration in Turner's emphasis on regionalism, his vision of the frontier as process, and his insights into American sectionalism. For his part, Turner was favorably impressed with the twenty-one-year-old graduate student from Georgia. He encouraged Phillips in his master's project-mapping the social and economic characteristics ofGeorgia's different geographical sections. Turner predicted that when Phillips had expanded and extended his research, he would contribute "just that kind of a study of the politics of a southern state American Negro Slavery 241 that we most need." There began a relationship of mutual admiration that matured for more than three decades.3 Phillips took his doctoral work at Columbia University, not Johns Hopkins. Had he planned to concentrate on slavery or some narrow aspect of southern history, he most certainly would have studied at Johns Hopkins with Adams and, after Adams's death, with James C. Ballagh. But Phillips favored broader training with more of a political science orientation. William A. Dunning...