The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina

Abstract

The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum Carolina. By Manisha Sinha. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 362. Maps. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $19.95.) Karl Marx understood movement for secession by slaveholding to be rejection of great principles of American Revolution, specifically those abstract principles exposed in Declaration of Independence, what he termed the first Declaration of Rights of Man(255). He had at least that much in common with George Fitzhugh, somewhat extravagant Virginian proslavery thinker who eagerly celebrated southern secession as solemn protest against doctrines of natural liberty, human equality and social contract as taught by Locke and American sages of 1776 (256). Manisha Sinha, in her important new study, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum Carolina, not only supports Marx's and Fitzhugh's perspectives, but proves them. With deft use of manuscript correspondence, published materials, newspapers, and pamphlet debates, Sinha tells unified story of rise to potency of proslavery, antidemocratic planter politics in Carolina and resoundingly demonstrates that movement to secession in Carolina was led by slaveholding class united in their defense of racial slavery and their contempt for democratic principles. Sinha structures book around series of national political conflicts that simultaneously engendered and strengthened defensive, antidemocratic stance of Carolina's political leaders and eventually solidified politics of slavery and secession. Beginning with controversies over tariff and emergence of Calhoun and nullifiers as political force, Sinha gracefully captures place of proslavery thinking and antidemocratic thought in what has sometimes been merely understood as states' rights movement. The nullifiers clearly made slavery the center-piece of their political philosophy in way that even proslavery Jacksonians never would (50). Although in 1830s nullifiers had to contend with strong unionist movement throughout state, their own success in nullification convention and their effective prosecution of test oath of loyalty to Carolina succeeded in demoralizing and weakening their opponents. As sectional controversy over slavery increased with heightened power of abolitionist movement and abolition of slavery in West Indies, defensive power of proslavery separatist thought continued to gain influence. Sinha next turns to territorial crises of 1846-1850 and finds Carolina proslavery ideologues leading polarization of debate over place of slavery in American expansion. Here she shows clearly that increasing significance of proslavery thought to southern nationalism was bound to politics of slavery in Carolina and was shaped by increasing appearance of a link between perceived external and internal threats to slave society (81). The next important decade, from failed secession movement in 1850, to attempt by few Carolinian leaders to reopen African slave trade in mid-1850s, to final drama of secession in 1860, is ably presented as period characterized by rapid maturation and elaboration of proslavery, antidemocratic, secessionist thought. The Carolinian political elite effectively excluded, courted, convinced, or otherwise cajoled timid interests within their own political orbit to necessity of slavery and southern independence. By 1860, South Carolina's unique political heritage and long standing commitment to politics of slavery and separatism groomed state leaders to play historic role in coming of secession and Civil War (220). Sinha effectively proves truth of Edmund Ruffin's belief in 1860 that the people of S. …