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Title: Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 by Lacy K. Ford ISBN: 0-19-506961-7 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: March, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A superb example of factor analysis at its outer limits!
Comment: As an insatiable devourer of antebellum studies, I heartily concur with Mr. Diffey's comments below concerning this astute, if somewhat textually dense, socio-political analysis the Old South. Only W. J. Cash's seminal "Mind of the South", the superbly myth-busting "The Southern Agrarians" by Conkin, Blassingame's somber and sobering "The Slave Community", and Wyatt-Brown's indispensable capstone study "Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South" are in the same league, in my estimation.
As a systems analyst, moreover, I'd like to share my appreciation for a valuable lesson this book offers to anyone attempting to fabricate or evaluate a "factor analysis" of historical events, or any other complex dynamics.
There's a principle in cognitive/systems theory to the effect that the all-too-finite human mind can contain only so many discrete concepts at once -- the number is classically stated as "seven, plus or minus two". Look at any random batch of examples of visually displayed information, for example, and you'll find yourself boggling over any of them with more than 7-9 boxes, symbols, or whatever, to be considered as a consolidated whole.
Ford's book is instructive because he posits about seven factors (as I recall, plus or minus one), as each being necessary for the rise of the uniquely radical tenor of South Carolinian politics in the antebellum era. He reviews other analyst's attempts to do with various combinations of three or four of these factors (the one-party system, Calhoun's overwhelming personality, etc.), but manages to argue convincingly that no less than the whole lot were crucial -- the absence of any one of them would have vitiated the collective dynamic which led to the South Carolinians' intransigence, even by the other Southern states' standards, and their initial secession.
The appreciative reader has to at once salute Mr. Ford on his masterly delineation of the key factors and their interactions, and wonder whether anyone could pull off a convincing resolution of a complex issue employing very many more factors than those required here.
In any case, the book is both a tour-de-force in the art and science of reducing amorphous data to concrete elements of an overall pattern, and a potentially sobering object lesson in the outer limits of intelligibility/communicability confronting anyone considering the pursuit of a similar objective.
P.S. "The Japanese Mind", by the dauntingly accomplished R. C. Christopher, achieves a correspondingly complex feat with regard to Japanese culture, and is highly recommended -- as is "Fragile Glory" by Bernstein, for anyone wanting to understand the dual nations of France and Paris, and Luigi Barzini's "The Italians", for similar gratification on that national/cultural front. On the U.S. socio-cultural scene, do read Aldrich's "Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth In America" for all that's essential to and fascinating about this rarefied, hyper-enfranchised psychosocial stratum....
Rating: 5
Summary: Analysis of social/economic factors leading to the civil war
Comment: "Origins of Southern Radicalism..." traces the evolution of Upstate South Carolina from a frontier of subsistance farms to a cotton and slave dependent society preceding the civil war. It reflects the economic situation (supported by a surprising amount of data), the development of trading, merchants and towns, the religious sentiments of the time, and how the mixture of cotton, money, society and externally ineffective religious conviction led to disharmony and war. If anyone wants a clear window into the conditions and issues that led to our Nation's worst horrors, read this book.
"Origins" is academic in nature, and a "slow read". But, it needs to be in order to accurately document what was going in the decades leading up to the civil war. The book is built on primary evidence, and is as unfiltered a flow of facts and events as is possible. The author shows no Northern/Southern bias - just reveals the facts of the times. More than any of the numerous books I have read on the civil war, this one answers the biggest questions: "How was this tragedy of slavery perpetuated and how did this horrible war happen?"
There is a lesson here for all future generations concerned about human rights and the failure of politics to achieve favorable outcomes.
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Title: Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama , 1800-1860 by J. Mills Thornton ISBN: 080710891X Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: September, 1981 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 by William W. Freehling ISBN: 0195072596 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: December, 1991 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Gender and American Culture (Paper)) by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese ISBN: 080784232X Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War by Eric Foner ISBN: 0195094972 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Roll, Jordan, Roll : The World the Slaves Made by Eugene D. Genovese ISBN: 0394716523 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 January, 1976 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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