Clement Eaton. The Mind of the Old South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

            Clement Eaton tracks the development of a pro-slavery Southern mindset between the years 1820-1860. He does so by selecting to study individuals most representative of the ruling class in order to see “the process of history from the inside out” which, he claims, heightens our understanding of group and regional behavior (viii). Of the twenty men assessed in this study, only five favored secession. Only one man (Cassius Marcellus Clay) held unorthodox religious views and all but five owned plantations. Whilst this inductive method offers the reader tangible evidence to support Eaton’s assertions, it nevertheless isolates the vast majority of Southerners from the study. Only one chapter analyses the attack on slavery by non-slave holding Southerners and concludes that such views reflected economic protests rather than any preoccupation with moral imperatives. Eaton confines his investigation to the elites of society and largely neglects any review of the political forces in the yeoman class, a common omission at the time of writing. The dominant themes of the text include the growth of anti-intellectualism, pride in the distinctive nature of Southern culture, the re-imposition of conservative religious beliefs and the growing importance of adhering to a reigning ideology underpinned by racism.

            The text is divided into fifteen chapters that analyze such disparate aspects of culture as the scientific mind and the romantic mind. Eaton draws from a respectable selection of manuscripts, private correspondence, government papers, diaries, court records, autobiographies and newspapers and pamphlets to support his arguments. It may have proved interesting had the author incorporated some ethnographical and anthropological aspects into his review of “The Mind of the Southern Negro.” Once again, the inclusion of such interdisciplinary approaches is a relatively modern approach and Eaton has done a creditable job working within the confines of his generation. The book certainly offers some interesting arguments and perspectives that encourage further analysis.

            Eaton does not propose that all influential Southerners supported slavery. Rather, he suggests that before 1840 many men, particularly in the Upper South, remained troubled by guilt over the institution. Other, less liberal-minded individuals held that whilst slavery could not readily be defended it would prove crueler to free a people who obviously had no capacity for self-sufficiency (42). By 1860, the whites of certain southern states, South Carolina in particular, believed that the maintenance of slavery was essential to their physical safety and economic prosperity. Neither could progressive politicians, such as Henry A. Wise from Virginia, find much tangible success for his initiatives, as he could not overcome the ambivalence of various legislatures that “refused to tax the people to provide for the improvement of the state” (108). The retarded development of manufactures in the South stemmed from that region’s reliance on slavery. Many investors preferred to embrace the life of the plantation with its possibility of vast profits than seek economic security in urban endeavors.

            The most interesting chapter of Eaton’s book compares the growth or anti-intellectualism with the decline of “nonemotional” religions such as the Unitarian church. According to the author, by 1830, deism and skepticism had virtually disappeared in the South (200). The movement of Romanticism buoyed the evangelical movement that proved so appealing to Southern communities. Many preachers would ultimately support James Henley Thornwell’s position that slavery was justified by the Holy Scriptures and was a civil “relation with which the church had no right to interfere” (207). Essentially, Eaton shows that every element of Southern society was, to a greater or lesser degree, linked with, or influenced by, some element of institutional slavery.

Claire Phelan

The Mind of the Old South. By Clement Eaton. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, (Revised Edition ) 1967. Pp. xi, 348.

 “Some historians have sought to reduce the complexity of Southern life to a simple concept, a central theme, but such a quest for a unifying principle is as illusive as the search for the Holy Grail.”(306)

In The Mind of the Old South Eaton traces the development of Southern thought in the antebellum South, concluding that “the Southern mind, having reconciled the existence of slavery within a Christian society, cherished a romantic delusion that Southern civilization was superior to that of the North – in all that constitutes the gentleman and a gallant people.”(312) By 1860, he argues, the salient characteristics of Southern thought were an exaggerated sense of honor, a profound religious orthodoxy, an intense pride in local community, state and region, extreme conservatism, intolerance and strong racism.  As the Cotton Kingdom expanded, the South became anti-intellectual. Deism and skepticism disappeared, and Puritanical thought dominated religion. The influence of slavery stood in opposition to progress as the South tried to justify and defend such an anachronistic and unchristian practice. “It was during the antebellum period that the Southern mind acquired the habits of conservatism….”(312)

In an effort to understand the development of Southern thought, Eaton has focused his attention on carefully selected individuals representing the liberal, conservative, radical and progressive viewpoints. He also introduces representatives of such professions as agriculture, business, science, religion, government and literature. Of his more than a dozen examples, only four favored secession in 1860. All but two owned plantations. The men he presents are not as well known in some cases as their counterparts, yet he considers them representative of certain classes of thinkers. Such an approach is problematic. For instance, Eaton selected the Virginian John Hartwell Cocke as his “liberal” model, apologizing that though he might not seem much of a liberal, “he was the best that then old South had to offer.”(40)

The concerns of 1960s southerners influence Eaton’s book. “In 1860 the Southern people faced the prospect of a drastic change in their way of life imposed from without, as they do again a hundred years later.” (67) Yet he warns that the unwillingness to reform from within “was the mistake of the Southern mind before the Civil War.”

Ed Townes

The Mind of the Old South.  By Clement Eaton.  (Baton Rouge:  Louisiana State University Press, 1967.  Pp. 348).

The regional sense of values that developed in the South during the period immediately prior to the Civil War laid the foundations for long-enduring attitudes toward racial equality and the Federal government. In the period between 1820-1860 the Southern intellectual community veered sharply from the patterns established by Jefferson and Madison.  Led by John C. Calhoun, attitudes supporting slavery and states rights became increasingly rigid.  Gradually the proponents of slavery forced those who actively opposed slavery to emigrate from the southern states, closed newspapers that did not support the rigid orthodoxy of the pro-slavery movement.  The majority of Southerners who opposed slavery and/or secession were forced into complacent silence.

Eaton uses the technique of studying the biographies of representative individuals to present the process of change over time made by these individuals in their thoughts and political stances to determine the state of the Southern thought, particularly regarding slavery.  Slavery is the focus of the arguments presented in this work.  The author chose fifteen individuals to represent the Southern intellectual elite and as purveyors and shapers of Southern thought.  Individuals from various classes and backgrounds are grouped by their political stance--the reformers, liberals, commercial, progressives, radicals, scientific, religious, romantic, emotional, and yeoman and Negro individuals are analyzed.  The historian will recognize few of these names.

Presenting several of these individuals to present in detail, not by their importance but by their appeal to this author, demonstrate the author's methodology.  James H. Hammond became the brilliant young protégé of John C. Calhoun.  He married into the South Carolina aristocratic oligarchy and became their spokesman.  Great wealth made him indolent, prideful, and class-conscious.  He represented the reluctance of wealthy Southerners to embrace any reform of their society.  He destroyed his budding political career by a sexual scandal involving the daughters of his brother-in-law, Wade Hampton.  Returning to his plantations, Hammond endured political exile until time and the death of Calhoun allowed his elevation to the United States Senate.  He served there until the beginning of hostilities between the Confederacy and Union forces.  Hammond, a dark and chronically ill personality, demonstrates the ambiguity and innate conservative of Southern feelings toward slavery.  While always supporting the institution of slavery and his planter class, as governor, he led South Carolina through the Nullification crisis and States Rights debates.  Yet he opposed secession, unless part a generalized regional movement.

Cassius Clay, on the other hand, was to the manor born but rejected slavery to advocate the eradication of slavery.  Clay, a distant cousin of Henry Clay became a Whig politition in his native Kentucky.  He continued to advocate the education, gradual emancipation of slaves and the eventual elimination of slavery as necessary to the commercial development of the South.  In his newspaper he pointed out that two hundred slaves purchased few gods from tradesmen while two hundred freemen purchased many times more.  Clay freed is slaves but often called on his brother to supply him slaves to clear his land.  Mobs led by the pro-slavery forces closed Clay's newspaper, and, like most anti-slavery proponents before him, Clay moved across the Ohio River to Cincinnati to continue to publish his newspaper.  He was and early Republican, though not an abolitionist, supported Lincoln, and became ambassador to Russia during the Lincoln administration.

During a brief period following the Nat Turner slave rebellion, the Virginia reformers attempted to gradually eliminate slavery in their state.  Virginians had long entertained ambiguous views regarding the institution of slavery.  Depicting slavery as destructive to the small merchant, manufacturing, and tradesmen, Jesse Burton Harrison and John Hartwell Cocke almost succeeded in persuading the Virginia legislature to consider deporting slaves to Liberia, west of the Allegheny Mountains, or south into the Carolinas.  They encouraged freedmen to assume the same democratic responsibilities as their white counterparts.  After loosing the legislative battle, Virginia began to increasing restrict the rights of the free blacks and of slaves and forced the reformers to abjure their earlier views.

Eaton, using his biographical approach makes a powerful presentation of the forces affecting Southern leaders before the Civil War.  He that maintains orthodoxy on slavery became the crucial factor in Southern thought.  Fickle Southern voters, led by the slave owning oligarchy and newspapers, eliminated all opponents to slavery.  Religious fundamentalism also forced compliance with the "peculiar institution."  Rather than be ostracized by their neighbors or driven from their homes by violence, the opponents of slavery became silent, allowing the radicals to seize control of the government and eventually force the region into armed conflict.

After reading this book and the trials, tribulations, and mental ambiguity suffered by thoughtful southerners against the rigid orthodoxy demanded by the radicals, the Civil War became the only way to eliminate slavery.  The destruction of the Southern economy by the loss of so many of their financial assets became inevitable.  Perhaps the destruction by war of the physical infrastructure and the financial ruin forced by Confederate currency could have been avoided if the majority could have forced more rational and gradual emancipation into the Southern agenda.  This did not happen and the South suffered for generations.
 

Texas Christian University

Watson Arnold