An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918 - Softcover

Smith, John David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820313394 ISBN 13: 9780820313399

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1991

Synopsis

An Old Creed for the New Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865–1918 details the slavery debate from the Civil War through World War I. Award-winning historian John David Smith argues that African American slavery remained a salient metaphor for how Americans interpreted contemporary race relations decades after the Civil War. Smith draws extensively on postwar articles, books, diaries, manuscripts, newspapers, and speeches to counter the belief that debates over slavery ended with emancipation. After the Civil War, Americans in both the North and the South continued to debate slavery’s merits as a labor, legal, and educational system and as a mode of racial control. The study details how white Southerners continued to tout slavery as beneficial for both races long after Confederate defeat. During Reconstruction and after Redemption, Southerners continued to refine proslavery ideas while subjecting blacks to new legal, extralegal, and social controls. An Old Creed for the New South links pre– and post–Civil War racial thought, showing historical continuity, and treats the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws in new ways, connecting these important racial and legal themes to intellectual and social history. Although many blacks and some whites denounced slavery as the source of the contemporary “Negro problem,” most whites, including late nineteenth-century historians, championed a “new” proslavery argument. The study also traces how historian Ulrich B. Phillips and Progressive Era scholars looked at slavery as a golden age of American race relations and shows how a broad range of African Americans, including Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, responded to the proslavery argument. Such ideas, Smith posits, provided a powerful racial creed for the New South. This examination of black slavery in the American public mind—which includes the arguments of former slaves, slaveholders, Freedmen's Bureau agents, novelists, and essayists—demonstrates that proslavery ideology dominated racial thought among white southerners, and most white northerners, in the five decades following the Civil War.

About this title

About the Author

JOHN DAVID SMITH is the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author and editor of thirty books, including An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865–1918; Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops; and Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era.

Review

"An Old Creed for the New South is a most thoughtful study of the emerging interpretations of antebellum slavery in the immediate post-Civil War period and in the historical literature in the first half-century after emancipation. The analysis of the major (and minor) historians who helped shape the historical study of slavery--from Holst to Philips--shows the relationships among the uncovering of new sources, the asking of particular questions, and the beliefs of individual scholars. Based upon extensive research in a wide variety of sources, John David Smith has demonstrated how post-Civil War descriptions of the slave experience by southerners and northerners, by blacks and whites reflected (and, in turn, influenced) contemporary concerns about southern and racial issues. Smith's examination of the writings of contemporaries and historians is an important contribution to the study of slavery and emancipation, as well as a major work of historiographic analysis."-Stanley L. Engerman, Professor of Economics and History, University of Rochester

"Smith...has produced a heavily researched and clearly written survey of pro- and antislavery American writings from Appomattox to Versailles. The first three chapters outline the slavery debate from 1865 to the end of the century, and include the arguments of former slaves, slave-holders, Freedmen's Bureau agents, novelists, and essayists. Smith demonstrates that the debate over slavery continued unabated, despite its legal death in 1865. Chapters 4 through 8 describe the rise of professional historians in the late 1800s and examine their increasingly sophisticated research. Despite advances in methodology and research, professional scholars are divided into the same two basic groups as earlier writers--those who were sympathetic to slavery and those who denounced it...Detailed chapter notes, adequate index, bibliography of manuscripts only."-CHOICE

?Smith...has produced a heavily researched and clearly written survey of pro- and antislavery American writings from Appomattox to Versailles. The first three chapters outline the slavery debate from 1865 to the end of the century, and include the arguments of former slaves, slave-holders, Freedmen's Bureau agents, novelists, and essayists. Smith demonstrates that the debate over slavery continued unabated, despite its legal death in 1865. Chapters 4 through 8 describe the rise of professional historians in the late 1800s and examine their increasingly sophisticated research. Despite advances in methodology and research, professional scholars are divided into the same two basic groups as earlier writers--those who were sympathetic to slavery and those who denounced it...Detailed chapter notes, adequate index, bibliography of manuscripts only.?-CHOICE

?An Old Creed for the New South is a most thoughtful study of the emerging interpretations of antebellum slavery in the immediate post-Civil War period and in the historical literature in the first half-century after emancipation. The analysis of the major (and minor) historians who helped shape the historical study of slavery--from Holst to Philips--shows the relationships among the uncovering of new sources, the asking of particular questions, and the beliefs of individual scholars. Based upon extensive research in a wide variety of sources, John David Smith has demonstrated how post-Civil War descriptions of the slave experience by southerners and northerners, by blacks and whites reflected (and, in turn, influenced) contemporary concerns about southern and racial issues. Smith's examination of the writings of contemporaries and historians is an important contribution to the study of slavery and emancipation, as well as a major work of historiographic analysis.?-Stanley L. Engerman, Professor of Economics and History, University of Rochester

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820313394
• ISBN 13: 9780820313399
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 314