Tennessee Press Research Articles

Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860 by Richard C. Traylor

Reviewed by: Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860 by Richard C. Traylor John Saillant Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860. By Richard C. Traylor. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2015. Pp. [x], 278. $47.50, ISBN 978-1-62190-095-5.) Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776–1860 explores why the area that would come to be called Kentucky attracted settlers from the Carolinas, Virginia, and the mid-Atlantic states and became the home of many Baptist churches that grew into the South. Between 1776 and 1785, eighteen Baptist churches were founded in Kentucky. After revivals in 1799, both Baptist and Methodist churches gained members in Kentucky, but Baptists outpaced their evangelical rivals in membership growth. Kentucky became a zone where late-colonial evangelicalism was transformed by westward migration—a seedbed of Baptist churches for the expanding South. Richard C. Traylor begins by describing the importance of conversion, baptism, and communion in the Baptist church. Like historians Donald G. Mathews and William G. McLoughlin, Traylor argues that these rituals affiliated Baptists to a predestining God and absorbed believers into an orderly context that many [End Page 402] people found necessary as they migrated from colonial-era centers of authority. The second chapter places Baptist preachers at the vanguard of what Nathan O. Hatch has described as the democratization of American religion. Baptist preachers came from many walks of life and often served the church without a salary. They spoke plainly and used metaphors that would have been familiar to the masses. However, this egalitarianism had a price: when Baptist preachers failed, their congregations might jeer—one cost of democracy’s cutting edge. Next is a solid chapter about the founding of different Baptist churches and associations, followed by a chapter on Alexander Campbell’s challenge to Baptist theology and a theological rejuvenation inspired by Andrew Fuller. Campbell believed Baptist theology should be stripped down to first-century essentials, including immersion and emersion. By 1832, Campbell had gained a following from about a quarter of Kentucky Baptists, yet this exodus opened the door for a revivification of Calvinism led by Fuller. Although predestinarian, Fuller argued (against traditional Calvinism) for an unlimited atonement. This conviction fostered a more global, and less local, perspective for Baptist theology, which was reflected in many Baptist churches, missionary efforts, and institutions of higher learning. Slimmer chapters on women and African Americans conclude the book. Traylor argues that because both women and African Americans seem to have found value for themselves in churches dominated by white men, the source of the Baptist impulse must have been deep within southerners. A coda emphasizes that as Kentucky Baptists became less sectarian they confronted national issues of slavery, temperance, and accord with other denominations. Baptist localism had partly shielded congregations from these searing matters, but after 1840 the shields collapsed. While studies of individual colonies and states have existed since the advent of American historical scholarship, they have new urgency in the early twenty-first century. Shifts in public perceptions of historians’ work have shaken the ground that once supported a panoply of research efforts. State history is, however, one effort that should thrive today. State history is common in schools. Many public universities offer a course in the history of their state. As historians enter the profession, they might approach state history not as encyclopedic knowledge of one state but as transferrable skills that foster scholarship on many topics under a state-history umbrella. An upswing in state history will require good graduate training, scholarly works, and attention within public universities. Born of Water and Spirit is exemplary as a work that meets the opportunities of the early twenty-first century and provides a solid analysis of Baptists in transition from the southern seaboard colonies into the southern states. John Saillant Western Michigan University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

A Documentary History of the American Civil War. Vol. 4: Judicial Decisions, 1867–1896 ed. by Thomas C. Mackey

Reviewed by: A Documentary History of the American Civil War. Vol. 4: Judicial Decisions, 1867–1896 ed. by Thomas C. Mackey Linda Przybyszewski A Documentary History of the American Civil War. Vol. 4: Judicial Decisions, 1867–1896. Edited by Thomas C. Mackey. Voices of the Civil War. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. Pp. xx, 642. $70.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-040-5.) Now that so much historical material is becoming available online, we need to consider the rationale for the printed documentary volume. After all, the many documents that can be downloaded have changed how many of us work. Only a printed collection that is well annotated by a savvy editor can justify itself these days, and this is a tall order. This volume, the fourth in a series, offers judicial opinions from courts of appeal in their entirety with short introductions to each. Its editor, Thomas C. Mackey, argues that the series provides “access to the most important (and sometimes overlooked and difficult to locate) public policy and judicial decisions” of the era (pp. xi–xii). Mackey feels that historians have been neglecting the political, legal, and constitutional history of the Civil War period in favor of social and cultural history, and he hopes that these volumes will restore the balance. The book includes a list of suggested readings highlighting many important books on the constitutional history of the Civil War and Reconstruction that readers will find useful. Mackey’s book targets historians of the mid-nineteenth century, legal scholars, undergraduate students, and the serious Civil War buffs. The book is a handsome volume for those who like their document collections bound, and it contains all of the important Supreme Court opinions of the period. However, the book has drawbacks for all of its potential audiences except the history buffs. Although it is true that the last few decades have been dominated by wonderful social histories of the Civil War (leaving legal scholars feeling a bit unloved), if there are any judicial opinions that are well known, well studied, and readily available, it is the judicial opinions of the appellate courts, especially of the U.S. Supreme Court whose decisions make up eighteen of the twenty decisions reprinted here. And a reprint is a problem for legal scholars because the convention is to reference any quotation from a state or federal [End Page 447] judicial decision by using the page numbers of the original, printed court reporters. Using anything else in a footnote would be considered odd, if not unprofessional. Law professors rely on the Westlaw database, while college professors and students use the LexisNexis database. For this reason, this collection is suitable only for those outside academic and legal circles. In classes, law professors and some college teachers assign casebooks that are usually organized thematically and then chronologically within those themes. This volume is strictly chronological, which means that it may go from a case asking whether the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments ended racial segregation in public accommodations like a steamship or railroad, to a voting rights case, back to a public accommodations case, and on to a racial terrorism case, and so on. The introductions draw attention to how these cases are related, but the chronological organization makes it harder for readers to follow the legal issues. Casebooks often offer selections only from judicial opinions, which can be very long and technical, with extensive commentary by the author; they sometimes offer a host of accompanying documents to provide historical and legal context. Thus their value is in their editing and commentary. For example, a good casebook covering this era might offer something from Bradwell v. the State of Illinois (1872), where the Supreme Court denied that the Fourteenth Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause protected Myra Bradwell’s claim to admission to the state bar under Illinois law. Mackey’s volume offers Bradwell, and his introduction to the decision draws attention to Justice Joseph P. Bradley’s concurrence proclaiming that “the law of the Creator” declared a woman should be wife and mother only (p. 455). True enough, but the introduction does not acknowledge that Bradwell was a renowned legal editor or that the Illinois...

Change and Conflict in the U. S. Army Chaplain Corps Since 1945. By Anne C. Loveland. Legacies of War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. xvii + 248 pp. $64.00 cloth.

Change and Conflict in the U. S. Army Chaplain Corps Since 1945. By Anne C. Loveland. Legacies of War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. xvii + 248 pp. $64.00 cloth.

Nonfiction

Book Review| October 01 2015 Nonfiction The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism. Durwood Dunn. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013; 264 pp. Barry Whittemore Barry Whittemore Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Appalachian Studies (2015) 21 (2): 272–273. https://doi.org/10.5406/jappastud.21.2.0272 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Whittemore; Nonfiction. Journal of Appalachian Studies 1 January 2015; 21 (2): 272–273. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jappastud.21.2.0272 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Appalachian Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Loveland, Anne C.Change and Conflict in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps since 1945. Legacies of War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. xvii+349 pp. $64.00 (cloth).

Loveland, Anne C.<i>Change and Conflict in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps since 1945</i>. Legacies of War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. xvii+349 pp. $64.00 (cloth).

Tennessee Women in the Progressive Era: Toward the Public Sphere in the New SouthMary A.Evins, Editor. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

The Journal of American CultureVolume 38, Issue 3 p. 315-316 Book Review Tennessee Women in the Progressive Era: Toward the Public Sphere in the New South , Mary A. Evins, Editor. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. Kimberly K. Little, Kimberly K. Little Ohio UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Kimberly K. Little, Kimberly K. Little Ohio UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12397Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume38, Issue3September 2015Pages 315-316 RelatedInformation

Cannon Mills and Kannapolis: Persistent Paternalism in a Textile TownTimothy W.Vanderburg. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

Cannon Mills and Kannapolis: Persistent Paternalism in a Textile Town Timothy W. Vanderburg. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2013.This is a comprehensive history of what was once America's largest manufacturer of household textiles, that in many ways exemplified the textile industry and industrial paternalism in the postbellum South. However, its particular strain of paternalism was both much more powerful and enduring than elsewhere. From its foundation and the establishment of its company town Kannapolis (near Concord, northeast of Charlotte, North Carolina) during the late 1880s until the mid1980s, Cannon Mills operated as a paternalistic company controlled by a small group of insiders. Its founder James William Cannon and his associates on the board of directors ran the firm from its creation until 1921, when his son, Charles, took over. He would lead the firm until his death in 1971. While other companies in the textile industry were getting rid of mill villages and the vestiges of paternalism, Charles Albert Cannon was leading the firm in the mode established by his father. Kannapolis became the nation's largest unincorporated town, a distinction it kept until 1984. Thus, this firm's paternalism lasted long after most of the industry had changed to modern, bureaucratic management, which included the deployment of and resources practices, based on insights from the applied behavioral and social sciences.As the author points out, southern textile mill paternalism resembled the paternalism of northern textile mills, which, in turn, was modeled after English textile practices. By the early 1800s, for example, textile firms in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were providing a range of provisions for their workers. Pioneered by two companies in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts, this paternalist approach to manufacturing became known as the Waltham (sometimes called the Lowell) system. Northern industrial paternalism influenced the development of the textile industry in both the antebellum and postbellum South. Eventually, paternalism declined in the North, and industrialists replaced it with bureaucratic authority marked by impersonal business relations-a pattern that was followed by the southern textile industry that had settled in the southern Piedmont (xiii).Timothy Vanderburg claims that James Cannon exemplified the typical southern textile industrialist. Although industrialization was changing the nature of work and human relations in the workplace, he and other southern industrialists continued to have a strong belief in the role of a genteel upper class. In his The Mind of the South (1941), Wilbur Cash argued that the paternalism of the Old South plantation system was evident in the mill towns of the New South. The mill owners provided for their operatives like the plantation owners supplied their slaves with necessities; deference and fear were key elements of paternalism during both periods. But Vanderburg insists that this comparison should not be taken too far. Cotton mill operatives, unlike slaves, could also demonstrate their discontent with their employer by leaving, although, if they did so, they usually found themselves working in another cotton mill under a similar industrial regime. He furthermore points out that New South industrialists also held a strong belief in individualism and the sanctity of contracts. These beliefs led to a strong antiunion bias. Workers, they thought, should present their grievances to mill superintendents and owners personally, without the specter of collective bargaining or the influence of outside agitators. Yet, New South industrialists still would feel the burden of noblesse oblige: A tenuous balance existed between their desire for profits and their social obligations to improve the community. Enlightened self-interest often settled this conflict (3-4). Mill village paternalism was a pre-eminent manifestation of this tension between profits and community interest. …

The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876

Book Review| April 01 2015 The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876 The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876. By Patrick Steward and Bryan McGovern. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. 328 pp. Photos, notes, index, and bibliography. $45 (cloth). Ian Delahanty Ian Delahanty Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2015) 34 (3): 104–105. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.34.3.0104 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ian Delahanty; The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2015; 34 (3): 104–105. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.34.3.0104 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

All-American Redneck: Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks. Matthew J. Ferrence. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. 191 pp. $41.94 cloth.

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 48, Issue 2 p. 434-435 Book Review All-American Redneck: Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks. Matthew J. Ferrence. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. 191 pp. $41.94 cloth. Edward Jackson, Edward Jackson University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author Edward Jackson, Edward Jackson University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 April 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12272Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue2April 2015Pages 434-435 RelatedInformation

The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IX (1831) ed. by Daniel Feller (review)

Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IX (1831). Edited by Daniel Feller. Laura Eve-Moss, Thomas Coens, and Erik B. Alexander, Associate Editors. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. Pp. 987. Cloth, $92.00.)The year 1831 was a crucial one for Andrew Jackson's presidency, and the formidable size of this volume of the Jackson Papers is testament to the decisive nature of this period. scope and level of detailed editorial decision-making that goes into a project such as the Jackson Papers are daunting. Striking the balance between content and coverage, highlighting elements of significance while not omitting the mundane, and providing appropriate scholarly apparatus for a diverse readership are crucial features of a successful documentary project. As has become their pattern, Daniel Feller and his able team of editors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have risen to these challenges and produced a masterful documentary edition, embodying the best in editorial scholarship and practice, to bring a thorough and nuanced portrait of Jackson's 1831 to students of this era.The most fascinating aspect of 1831, as revealed through the correspondence, documents, and other materials included in the volume, is the way in which Jackson's presidency is so clearly in a state of flux. For the first half of 1831, the continuing fallout from the Peggy Eaton affair plays a dominant role in the documentary record. Readers of this volume be struck by the strong and sincere anguish Jackson-clearly a proud and defiant personality-felt about the rupture of his cabinet due to the social scandal that enveloped the wife of his longtime friend, political ally, and erstwhile Secretary of War John Eaton. Not only was Jackson's cabinet sundered by the imbroglio, but so too was his family; the president's nephew and his wife, Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily Tennessee Donelson, were caught up in the petticoat affair. Emily had served as official hostess for the widower Jackson; but her disdain for the purportedly scandalous backstory of Margaret (Peggy) Eaton led to a falling out between her, her husband, and Andrew Jackson, culminating in the Donelsons' return to Tennessee late in 1830. strain on Jackson, tom by personal loyalty to Eaton and depression over the rupture with his late wife's family, emerges clearly from his letters. In January, he plaintively wrote to Emily Donelson that John Eaton was a true and unvarying friend to me. . . . You cannot then but suppose how much disquietude it has occasioned to me, that harmony did not exist between you, your dear husband, 8c him, 8c his family (34). Yet, while lamenting the destructive effects the scandal had on both his political and familial worlds, Jackson evinced what was also a consistent theme in his worldview-the attribution of personal motivations to political enemies. The whole [scandal], he argued, will be traced to what I always suspected, a political maneauvre, by desappointed ambition, to coerce Major Eaton out of the Cabinet, 8c lessen my standing with the people, so that they would not again urge my re-election (34).Throughout the subsequent few months, Jackson's insistence that the Eaton affair arose from political-not social-motivations runs like a colorful thread through the volume of his correspondence. In April, for example, we see Jackson telling Tennessean Samuel Jackson Hays that the cabinet schism and Eaton's subsequent resignation was fomented by John C. Calhoun and his allies in an effort to replace Eaton with someone subservient to their views, and by which they might seperate me from Van Buren whose republican worth 8c talents they dreaded . …

Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War Joseph W.Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War Joseph W. Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.In 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, concerned about the mass of newly drafted soldiers who had trouble adjusting to military life as manifested in the morale crisis of that summer, enlisted the services of social scientists to conduct interviews and surveys of American GIs to find out what they thought about the army. He did so over the objections of many military leaders whose resistance to the idea of polling was deeply entrenched and had to be overcome during the war. Samuel A. Stouffer, then a University of Chicago sociology professor, was selected to lead this effort. In his role as head of the Army Information and Education Division's Research Brand, he directed a team of sociologists, psychologists, and statisticians who sought to understand a range of problems that afflicted the US Army. Stouffer and his associates investigated such important issues as why men fought, what sustained them in battle, what they thought of their allies and enemies, and why a substantial number became psychiatric casualties. The focus was on soldier attitudes and organizational and small-group processes with an emphasis on policy applications at army level, based on the Research Branch's primary role as vehicle of social engineering.Stouffer and his team administered over two hundred different questionnaires, many of which contained over one hundred items, to more than one-half million American soldiers in all parts of the world. Anecdotal data from case studies were used to illustrate and provide a different check of the findings. They also pioneered focus groups as research method and demonstrated that this combination of sociological methods was highly effective in debunking myths about social life in military units. An eminent example is the discovery that enlisted combat groups were more motivated by a desire to finish the task, to end the war, than by any other factor, including buddy or idealist motivations like patriotism. In general, returning veterans were ethnocentrically and individualistically motivated - an understandable self-centered orientation given the often great personal sacrifices they made during the war. But this challenges the oversimplified view of the World War II veterans in the Greatest Generation mythology that prevails in American culture today.Stouffer and his associates published monthly reports entitled What the Soldier Thinks and made the most important research findings public after the war through the two-volume study The American Soldier, published in 1949. The topics included analytical descriptions of morale, social cohesion and performance, social mobility, motivation, job satisfaction, attitudes toward and behavior in combat, including issues concerning fear, hostility and aggression, organizational change, social problems in the field, blackwhite relations, and demographics of troops and veterans. Stouffer's wartime work influenced multiple facets of policy, including demobilization and the GI Bill. Already by 1930, his ideas on empirical survey research had become part of what was rapidly developing into the mainstream of sociology in America. …

Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper's Son John O.Hodges. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

Delta Fragments: Recollections of a Sharecropper's Son John O. Hodges. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.By today's standards, John Hodges grew up in what can only be called impoverished conditions: a three-room shotgun shack without running water, located on a Mississippi Congressman's plantation. He ended up a professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In this memoir of sorts, Hodges recounts his formative years (the late 1950s and early 1960s) in the Mississippi Delta up until he moved to attend Morehouse College. Delta Fragments provides short recollections and reflections on a variety of topics that primarily revolve around issues of race. book is divided into two parts. first part comprises about one-third of the work and provides background on the region but focuses primarily on Hodges's family and his childhood. second part comprises the remaining two-thirds and delves into many of the issues raised and suggested by the first third, primarily religion, segregation, the civil rights movement, and the everyday struggles of the mostly poor African American population in the Delta. By Hodges's own admission, many of the chapters may come across fragmentary, incomplete and undeveloped, but he asks readers to view them as an opportunity to provide one's own perspective and to draw his or her own conclusions (xvii). To that end, Hodges often provides thoughtful questions, such in The Black Preacher when he asks How could he allow civil rights workers to speak about voter registration matters to church members who depended on whites for their jobs? (129). Many of the topics he broaches and the questions he asks could be used in an undergraduate classroom setting to help stimulate provocative discussions.The short chapters (they average about six pages) address a broad range of subjects. first third is devoted to chapters about his mother, stepfather, sister, parts of his extended family, the Whittington plantation, childhood friends, and his schooling among others. second part of the book features two main clusters addressing the African American church and the civil rights movement, in which Hodges participated a young man. He compares his book to autobiographies by David Cohn and William Alexander Percy and explains that it provides an updated view of the same region from the perspective of an African American. Hodges also acknowledges his book's similarities to Clifton Taulbert's and Endesha Holland's memoirs. …

The Ebony Column: Classics, Civilization, and the African American Reclamation of the West by Eric Ashley Hairston (review)

Reviewed by: The Ebony Column: Classics, Civilization, and the African American Reclamation of the West by Eric Ashley Hairston Eran Shalev (bio) Keywords Classics, Classical history, African Americans, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B Du Bois The Ebony Column: Classics, Civilization, and the African American Reclamation of the West. By Eric Ashley Hairston. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2013. Pp. 262. Cloth, $48.00.) A sermon published in 1782, addressed to “the Americans in general, but to the citizens of South Carolina in particular,” revealed remarkable, [End Page 517] if common, contemporary use of the classics. The tract’s author glorified Revolutionary valor in a thoroughly classicized fashion: The British, for example, “have been fought with bravery equal to that of Romans, by the raw and undisciplined Americas.” Praising “the virtuous daughters of Carolina,” the author praised their “courage, perseverance and fortitude [which] are equal to the daughters of ancient Rome and Sparta.” Such flourishes were customary in Revolutionary America, and we have learned much about the sophistication of Americans’ usage of classical history for their political needs by a growing number of studies devoted to the reception of the classics during the republic’s first century. This particular tract, however, was unique. Written by “A Black Whig,” the author self-identified as a black “son of freedom.” 1 This author’s racial identity raises questions that historians of the classics in America have not yet dealt with satisfactorily. Was this author, as a member of the lowest social and racial caste, aware of the irony of praising women, who were also deprived of a meaningful participation in the classical discourse, in a language that must have been as foreign to many of them as it was to the vast majority of African Americans? Was he aware of the marginalization of women in classical societies? What went through this black South Carolinian’s mind when using the same classical idiom masters mockingly invoked in giving classical names to black slaves? Ironically, most of the Catos, Caesars, and Brutuses of America were not white Americans signing newspaper articles with classical pseudonyms or taking pleasure in the classical names and metaphors that their peers bestowed upon them—both prevalent modes of political discourse. Rather, they were enslaved blacks, deprived of their liberty—an idea that was itself understood in America through a conceptual language with its origins in Greece and Rome. Aside from the remarkably high levels of classical proficiency in late-eighteenth-century America, the early national classical discourse left a sizable portion of white males, most women, and virtually all blacks out of its discursive boundaries. In the past decades we have learned through the pioneering works of such scholars as Reinhold Meyer and Carl Richard about the ways in which elite Americans co-opted the classics; [End Page 518] while historians from Linda Kerber to Caroline Winterer have underscored how women, though lacking a formal classical education, still made use of antiquity for their purposes. Chattel slavery in the New World unconditionally denied blacks access to the intellectual foundations of their society. American slaves and their descendants held little if any knowledge of the classics. Or so we have assumed. Historians have largely overlooked African Americans’ participation in the classical discourse, a lacuna that Eric Ashley Hairston’s impressive The Ebony Column is bound to fill. Hairston’s study does not analyze idiosyncratic—and rare—tracts such as the aforementioned Black Whig’s. Rather, he conducts a learned series of close readings of four prominent black writers spanning some 140 years. Hairston’s goal is to point to black writers’ deployment of classical references and to demonstrate how “African Americans were able to use the classics pragmatically to craft more nuanced political, ethical, religious and intellectual positions” (5). The classics proved such an important arena for Africans and African Americans to demonstrate their intellectual worth because mastery of “the classics” was widely recognized as the mark of superior intelligence. Hence, Hairston’s object is overtly ambitious, an “African American reclamation of the West” and a full reconsideration of “the entire corpus of African American Literature” (24). Hairston finds many forms of classicism in the...

Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley: Archaic Sacred Sites and Rituals. Cheryl Claassen. 2010. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. xii + 275 pp. $49.00 (cloth), ISBN: 978- 1572337145.

Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley: Archaic Sacred Sites and Rituals. Cheryl Claassen. 2010. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. xii + 275 pp. $49.00 (cloth), ISBN: 978- 1572337145. - Volume 79 Issue 3

NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965 by Thomas L. Bynum (review)

Reviewed by: NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965 by Thomas L. Bynum Lee Sartain (bio) NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965. By Thomas L. Bynum. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. Pp. 226. $49.00 cloth) Any mention of African American youth in the civil rights struggle will evoke images of the sit-ins of 1960 and the Freedom Rides of 1961. Rarely (if ever) is the NAACP involved in this popular history [End Page 532] of youth activism because, as an organization, it is often considered staid and legalistic. In this respect, Bynum’s monograph on NAACP youth groups is an important historiographic development that places youth activism into the long civil rights history and shows that 1960s radicalism was but part of a tradition of youth activism dating back to the 1930s. Bynum has inserted NAACP youth members into the civil rights narrative in a comprehensive manner, although his book builds on the work of Rebecca De Schweinitz (If We Could Change the World [2009]) while having none of her legal or philosophical depth. Indeed, Bynum’s book has a broad approach and often misses nuance that local or state studies can give. Indeed, the very concept of youth required further examination as De Schweinitz does in her research. For example, the debate that the NAACP undertook on who exactly is youthful is mentioned in a footnote (p.155, n21). The concept of teenager had to be invented in a materialistic age and the debate of the delineation between childhood, young person, and the transition to adult was ongoing. Did the concept of youth in society change from the 1930s to the 1960s and was that reflected in NAACP organizing? There is little practical or structural deliberation given to the fact that organizational youth leadership was regularly decapitated through the aging process. NAACP college chapters had perennial problems of summer holidays and students who undertook paid work and studied rather than being activists. Sometimes the youth abandoned NAACP groups due to its conservatism and control by the adult branch, but often they just got older and moved on. However, the idea that young people contain special talents and are free from the constraints reserved for adults certainly required further acknowledgement. There is little development of gender or leadership theory and, therefore, the book feels somewhat old fashioned at times. The author highlights major female leaders of the NAACP youth wing, such as Juanita Jackson and Ruby Hurley, but does not explain why they were able to exert their leadership. Was it unique to the NAACP that women could become major organizational leaders? Was it youth [End Page 533] activism that allowed young and single women to pursue leadership? Interesting and important characters are often introduced, yet very little is made of their contribution beyond reporting with scant detail. For example, Muriel Gregg, a promising leader who joined the NAACP field staff in 1955, followed a familiar pattern for women by resigning to get married. Bynum states that Herbert Wright, NAACP youth secretary, “commented that the association needed someone as efficient as Gregg but with a better personality” (p. 69). This is quite a statement and really needs analysis. Was Gregg rejected by the NAACP due to being a strong female leader in a patriarchal organization? Similarly Herbert Wright, whose career went from student activist to NAACP leader, is underdeveloped in these pages as a major personality who developed the youth councils during the 1950s and seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how to build up a youth movement. Overall, this is a standard text that reports on an important aspect of neglected history. Its strength is in its focus on generational conflict between youth and adult members of the NAACP. However, there was so much more to be considered. Lee Sartain LEE SARTAIN is a senior lecturer in American history at the University of Portsmouth, England. He is the author of Invisible Activists (2007), Borders of Equality (2013) and co-editor of Long is the Way and Hard: 100 Years of the NAACP (2009). He is currently working on black youth movements of the 1940s and 1950s and also...

The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee by Earl J. Hess (review)

Reviewed by: The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee by Earl J. Hess Laura J. Ping The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee. Earl J. Hess. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-57233-916-3, 424pp., cloth, $39.95. During the fall of 1863, Union general Ambrose Burnside and Confederate general James Longstreet vied for control of East Tennessee and the railroad that linked southwestern Virginia with the Western Confederacy. The subsequent siege of Knoxville lasted from September to December 1863 and contributed to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory at Chattanooga. Historically, the 1863 Knoxville campaign has been overshadowed by the Federal victory at the Battle of Chattanooga, which allowed the Union army to infiltrate the Deep South. Author Earl J. Hess, however, argues that the Union’s political and humanitarian objectives for capturing Knoxville make the campaign more significant than previously recognized. Militarily, East Tennessee, specifically Chattanooga, was important as the source of the east-west and north-south railroad line. Whichever army controlled the railroad would also control the most direct route from the western theater to Virginia. East Tennessee was also attractive to Union authorities because the population was predominately unionist. President Lincoln believed that Union control of East Tennessee was imperative to Union victory and the protection of this loyalist population. Until 1863, however, the Union army did not have enough additional manpower to support sending an army to the West. Only when General Burnside, who had been relieved from his post as commander of the Army of the Potomac, was appointed to the Ninth Corps and sent to Kentucky did the Union army have enough military force in the West to prioritize the capture of Chattanooga. Burnside and his army marched easily into Knoxville in the fall of 1863. Confederate general James Longstreet also identified Chattanooga as an important stronghold because of its connection to the railroad. Longstreet believed that a Confederate victory was dependent on invading Union territory from Kentucky to the Ohio River. Tennessee provided the perfect gateway for implementing this strategy. Bolstered by the Confederate victory at Chickamauga in September 1863, Longstreet and two divisions of the Army of Northern Virginia marched toward Knoxville in hopes of recapturing the town. The siege of Knoxville officially began on November 19. Although Hess notes that it was not a siege in the traditional sense, because Burnside’s food supply was too extensive for Longstreet to starve the Union army out of Knoxville, the experience was marked by extreme hardships for both civilians and soldiers. Affluent unionists fled before the siege was underway, but the majority of civilians faced the difficulties of life with twelve thousand soldiers. Fences were destroyed for firewood, tents and wagons were parked in yards and on sidewalks, and there was little regard for property. Civilians were forced to take shelter in cellars and ravines to escape falling shells. Supply shortages forced soldiers to eat corn originally intended for horses. [End Page 217] Winter weather and ragged uniforms resulted in Confederate soldiers fashioning shoes out of raw beef hides, while Union soldiers combated the cold by huddling in holes. Confederate efforts to retake Knoxville ultimately were abandoned after their defeat at Chattanooga in November 1863. Longstreet’s retreat clinched the Federal control of Knoxville, which ended Confederate efforts to conquer East Tennessee. Hess’s attention to detail is commendable, but his insight into the military policy surrounding the Knoxville campaign lends little new information. The most valuable aspect of Hess’s discussion is in the description of the civil importance of liberating the loyalist population of Knoxville. Ecstatic loyalists, many of whom were African American, greeted Union soldiers. Tennessee had been excluded from President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, and as a result Burnside’s men were welcomed as emancipators. White citizens, too, believed that they were being freed from the control of a foreign power and willingly shared supplies and provided housing for Union officers. While the initial exuberance felt by unionist civilians waned during the siege, Federal support in Knoxville remained strong. According to Hess, the greatest legacy of the Knoxville campaign was the political benefits of freeing a loyalist...

Wittner, Lawrence S. Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. xiii + 268 pp. US$29.95 (paperback); US$23.95 (e‐book).

WorkingUSAVolume 17, Issue 1 p. 115-123 BOOK REVIEW Wittner, Lawrence S. Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. xiii + 268 pp. US$29.95 (paperback); US$23.95 (e-book). Doug Munro, Doug MunroSearch for more papers by this author Doug Munro, Doug MunroSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 March 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12098Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume17, Issue1March 2014Pages 115-123 RelatedInformation

Book Review: Houses Without Names: Architectural Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses

Book Review| February 01 2014 Book Review: Houses Without Names: Architectural Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses Houses Without Names: Architectural Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses by Thomas C. Hubka. : University of Tennessee Press, 2013. vii + 112 pp.; illustrations, notes, index; paperbound, $29.95. Patrick O’Bannon Patrick O’Bannon Gray & Pape, Inc. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2014) 36 (1): 108–110. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2014.36.1.108 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Patrick O’Bannon; Book Review: Houses Without Names: Architectural Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses. The Public Historian 1 February 2014; 36 (1): 108–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2014.36.1.108 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction. By Paul H.Bergeron. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. 300 pp.

Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction. By Paul H. Bergeron. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. 300 pp. Since 1960, the reputation of Andrew Johnson's presidency steadily eroded, a decline that is largely attributable to a revolution in Reconstruction scholarship. Although studies by James Sefton and Albert Castel gave Johnson his due in certain areas (Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power [Little Brown, 1980]; Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson [University Press of Kansas, 1979]), the author of the only modern full-length biography, Hans Trefousse (Andrew Johnson: A Biography [W. W. Norton, 1997]), was far more critical of Johnson's Reconstruction policy. According to Paul H. Bergeron, who as editor oversaw the publication of the last eight of the sixteen volumes of The Papers of Andrew Johnson (University of Tennessee Press, 1967-2000), the Tennessean has been vilified enough (p. 6). He argues that one can make too much of Johnson's racism, given prevailing attitudes at the time. Moreover, simply to dismiss Johnson as a racist risks overlooking other considerations that shaped his performance as president, including his commitment to preserving executive power and defending his interpretation of the Constitution. Rather, Bergeron asserts, one must set his racism in the context of his other attitudes and attributes, positive and negative, to gain a better overall assessment of Lincoln's successor in the White House. Bergeron recounts Johnson's career during the 1860s, incorporating his experiences as a senator, military governor, and vice president, as well as his four years as chief executive. As military governor of Tennessee, Johnson's energetic exercise of authority reinforced an already defiant, combative, and, at times, inflexible approach to political life. His actions earned Lincoln's approval: the president offered no objection (and, perhaps, some private encouragement) to Johnson's being named his running mate in 1864. Nearly six weeks after an embarrassing debut as vice president highlighted by a rambling harangue, Johnson assumed the presidency, courtesy of an assassin's bullet. As president, Johnson embraced a reconciliationist approach toward the former Confederates. For all of his bombast about punishing traitors, he reserved his venom for a select few prominent leaders, while embarking upon a pardon policy that proved most liberal. Accepting the destruction of slavery, he had little interest in advancing the fortunes of the freedmen, bringing talk of widespread confiscation and redistribution of plantations to a dead halt. The only time he showed any interest in enfranchising blacks was to silence his critics by extending the right to vote to a handful of freedmen. …

Rethinking Shiloh: Myth and Memory by Timothy B. Smith (review)

Reviewed by: Rethinking Shiloh: Myth and Memory by Timothy B. Smith Ethan S. Rafuse (bio) Rethinking Shiloh: Myth and Memory. By Timothy B. Smith. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. Pp. 197. $38.95 cloth) On April 6, 1862, a Union army encamped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River unexpectedly found itself under attack from a Confederate force commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston. In the months prior to April 6, Union arms had won a series of significant victories in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River that seemed to put the Confederate war effort in the West on the verge of complete collapse. Johnston responded by concentrating Confederate forces for a desperate effort to destroy the Federal force at Pittsburg Landing. The result was the bloody battle of Shiloh, in which Johnston was initially able to surprise Union commander Ulysses S. Grant and drive his forces from their campsites. The Confederates, however, were unable to achieve a truly decisive [End Page 615] victory and on April 7 were compelled to retreat from the field, having lost Johnston to a mortal wound during the first day of fighting. The story of Shiloh and its effect on the course of the Civil War are familiar topics to most students of the sectional conflict, though Timothy B. Smith demonstrates that there are aspects of the battle that merit significant reconsideration. In Rethinking Shiloh, he offers a collection of previously published essays that will be of value and appeal to anyone with an interest in the battle. The first provides a useful discussion of how terrain influenced the course and conduct of the battle, while three essays offer interesting contributions to scholarship on three generals for whom Shiloh was a pivotal event in their military careers: Albert Sidney Johnston, Benjamin Prentiss, and Lew Wallace. The essays on the last two men are notable for their focus on how their performances have been remembered by history—inaccurately, Smith argues. Smith’s critical take on Prentiss is part of a larger case he makes throughout the book against the central place that fighting at the so-called “Hornet’s Nest” on April 6 occupies in most accounts of the battle, which he demonstrates is to a large extent the result of the efforts of David W. Reed, who fought on that part of the field and served as the first historian of Shiloh National Military Park. This is followed by a short essay looking at the fate of delegates to the Mississippi secession convention who served in Johnston’s army at Shiloh. Smith’s final three essays offer compelling looks at the history of the battlefield, reflecting his extensive research into the efforts to preserve and interpret battlefields in the western theater. Readers interested in the community that resided in the area where the battle was fought, how the battle affected its members, and the relationship they had with the federal government as it endeavored to preserve the battlefield will enjoy the essay on that subject, one aspect of which is treated in greater detail in a separate essay looking at the effect New Deal programs had on the park. The intriguing story of the film shown at the visitor center for fifty-six years prior to its retirement in 2012 is the subject of the final essay. [End Page 616] All nine of these essays offer full treatments of their various topics without sacrificing readability. The ability of readers to follow the text is greatly enhanced as well by the many high-quality maps that appear in the book. By bringing these essays together under a single cover, Smith and the University of Tennessee Press have performed a welcome service for students of Shiloh, its battlefield, and the history of both. Ethan S. Rafuse Ethan S. Rafuse is professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Copyright © 2013 Kentucky Historical Society