I enjoyed this book immensely. It greatly added to my knowledge and understanding of the ante-bellum South and why secession and the Civil War occurred. Reading this book was like reading one of the books about what I didn't learn about American history. It seems that most of the history I have read was written from a Northern point of view and showed little understanding of the Southern attitudes portrayed in this book. This book helped me to understand how fundamental and very real were the differences between North and South. In the book the authors state that the Southerners shared a government with the free North. Their book is a lengthy exposition on how true that was.
The volume of research cited in the book is imposing. The footnotes comprise one-third of the 718 pages of text. After the text are 80 pages of supplementary references on topics from Addison and Cato to Women and the Classics. Instead of a descriptive review I will provide a few examples of what I learned by reading the book.
The intellectual life in the South centered around the fact that is was a slaveholding, agrarian, republican society. I say republican to emphasize that Southerners did not believe in true democracy. In commenting on the French Revolution Southern writers saw a democracy leading to the tyranny of Napoleon.
Much of Southern intellectual life was an attempt to justify slavery and define how to administer their duties as slave masters in accordance with historical and Christian standards. There is a discussion of Abramic slavery, slavery as practiced by Abraham. The South saw itself as a different and better place and some Southern writers recommended slavery for the workers of the North.
The section on religion in Southern intellectual life is approximately one-third of the book. The South was a country of small towns and villages and the church was the primary social activity.
The Southerners made great use of the Bible to justify slavery. They often cited the fact that Jews and other peoples in the Bible owned slaves and there was no criticism of slavery in the Bible. Southerners tried to justify African slavery with the curse of Noah and referred to Africans as "The sons of Ham". Southern theologians strongly criticized the Northern Transcendentalists and Unitarians.
The chapter on John Brown's raid on the Harper's Ferry armory corroborated my understanding of how it contributed to sectional hatreds. John Brown had been financed by Northern abolitionists and took over Harper's Ferry armory to control the weapons there. While he publicly stated that he did not intend to start a slave uprising that was his plan. In the North John Brown became a hero and was compared to Jesus. The Southerners saw this incident as proof that Northern abolitionists intended to promote slave uprisings that would lead to the slaughter of white Southerners. I agree with the statement of the authors that for many Southerners Harper's Ferry or its aftermath either proved to be the last straw or put them in a frame of mind to reject Lincoln's election more firmly than they might have done. The North and the South during this time were two societies who didn't know each other and increasingly didn't like each other.
After secession and before the Civil War Abraham Lincoln and other Northerners thought that Union sentiment in the South would lead to reconciliation before any conflict. Reading this book helped me to understand why that was never a real possibility. ( )