A Defence of the South Against the Reproaches and Incroachments of the North: In Which Slavery is Shown to be An Institution of God Intended to Form the Basis of the Best Social State and the Only Safeguard to the Permanence of a Republican Government

[Slavery] [Religion] Brookes, Rev. Iverson L. A.M.

Published by Printed at the Republican Office, Hamburg, South Carolina, 1850

About this Item

Wraps. 48 pages. Covers are detached and stitching mostly removed leaving several loose pages. Small edge tears to a few pages. Toning to the contents. Pages 47 and 48 has an old tape repair with slight loss of print. This is pro Slavery and religious defense of the institution from a Southern Minister. Fair only. From the North Carolina Encyclopedia (ncpedia dot org): "Iveson Lewis Brookes, Baptist clergyman, planter, and Southern sectionalist, was the eldest of five sons of Jonathan and Annie Lewis Brookes and was born in Rockingham County. His father was a veteran of the Revolution. His parents had only recently moved to North Carolina from Spotsylvania County, Va., where many of his relatives continued to live; soon after his birth his parents moved permanently to Caswell County. Educated in a local academy during his early years, in 1812 Brookes enlisted in the American army. After seeing only limited action during the War of 1812, he entered The University of North Carolina. He was graduated in 1819 after developing what proved to be a lifelong acquaintance with both James K. Polk and Thomas Hart Benton. In his commencement address, entitled "Is the State of the World Better in the Present Age Than at Any Former Period?" Brookes expressed an optimism and an enmity to slavery that were totally antithetical to his later positions. Undecided about his future, he spent a year as a teacher in Greensboro"."Although he had opposed slavery as a student at The University of North Carolina, Brookes became a staunch defender of slavery and a rabid southern sectionalist. During the Nullification controversy, he was made a minuteman by Governor James Hamilton of South Carolina. In 1861, at the age of sixty-eight, he offered himself for service in the Confederate Army. From the first appearance of abolitionism he feared for the future of southern society. From 1835 he wrote dozens of defenses of slavery, most of them in the form of letters to northern antislavery periodicals. His most famous defenses were two pamphlets written during the crisis of 1850: A Defence of the South against the Reproaches and Incroachments of the North (1850) and A Defence of Southern Slavery against the Attacks of Henry Clay and Alexander Campbell (1851), the latter written at the behest of Governor James Henry Hammond of South Carolina. The productions of an enraged slaveholder revealing little of the optimistic and balanced thinking of his youthful years, those two documents stood as the most characteristic statements of a die-hard southern sectionalist who had learned to love the life of a slaveholding planter.

Seller Inventory # 36089

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Defence of the South Against the Reproaches and Incroachments of the North: In Which Slavery is Shown to be An Institution of God Intended to Form the Basis of the Best Social State and the Only Safeguard to the Permanence of a Republican Government
• Publisher: Printed at the Republican Office, Hamburg, South Carolina
• Publication Date: 1850
• Binding: Wraps
• Condition: Fair
• Seller catalogs:
  • Slavery
  • American South
  • Religion