Slavery, Secession, and Southern History

Abstract

The authors of this collection offer their book in tribute to Eugene D. Genovese. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman write the introduction, an evenhanded survey of Gen-ovese's scholarship. The essay makes it clear that Fogel and Engerman and Genovese have always been interested in different questions pursued through incompatible approaches to history. No amount of cliometric analysis will uncover what Genovese sees as most important, namely, the mind of the master. No explication of the mind can account for what Fogel and Engerman see as central, that is, the identifiably capitalistic behavior of slaveholders. They stand at an epistemological impasse, which seems to suit them just fine. Of the nine essays that follow the introduction, several expand on Genovese's understanding of ideology, social organization, and the state in the history of the South. Drew Gilpin Faust's essay on the North Carolina diarist and essayist Catherine Devereux Ed-mondston reveals the strength of commitment of some southerners to a social order based on privilege and subordination. Clyde Wilson illuminates John C. Calhoun's vision of a national community in which the state would rein in selfish individuals, classes, and regions in the interest of the common good and national unity. According to Douglas Ambrose, the sociologist Henry Hughes urged that the state play a greater role in the relationship between master and slave in the interests of both individuals, and the theologian James Henley Thornwell reminded his audience that the state, if subject to the authority of God, could be a force against social sin, including the sins of mastery.