Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860, by Lacy K. Ford, Jr. (Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford, 1988) Pp. 414, ISBN: 0-19-504422-3

            Without a doubt, South Carolina led the slavery debate in the South. It set the tone for the nullification debate, the secessionist debate, and was the first state to leave the Union. In addition, it's perception of the violence of radical abolitionists created a sort of hysteria that seemed to spread among its fellow states, creating a feeling of impending tyranny that would flow from the North. This radicalism was not purely a creation of external factors, however: the unique internal structure and direction of South Carolina's society shaped its reactions as much as any dangerous Northern plot. The growth of South Carolina's radical element is the focus of Lacy K. Ford, Jr.'s Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860.

            This study of Southern radicalism is centered on the South Carolinian Upcountry, defined by Ford as thirteen influential counties in the northwest region of the state. After establishing the region of study, Ford analyzes the economic and societal pressures which directed the future of South Carolina, including a brief history of the rise of the Calhoun family. Special attention is paid to both the dependence the state builds on a single staple crop, and the Carolinian assumption of its unique position in the nation due to this crop. The next area of focus is the political development of the secessionist movement, as influenced by the nullification faction founded by John C. Calhoun, and its eventual devolution into radical secessionism following his death. The combination of a sudden economic boom, combined with the perceived attacks on slavery via violent Unionists (such as John Brown) resulted in the growing strength of this particular movement.

            Ford's source material is drawn from personal papers, manuscripts, government documents, published speeches, newspaper articles, and a wide range of other primary source material. In addition, a wide library of books and other histories provides him with the structural framework of his analysis. Of special focus are those histories focused on economics, society, politics, and law. It is clear that Ford hoped to better understand the overall development of South Carolina's upcountry as a hotbed of secessionist sentiment.

            Considering the overwhelming influence South Carolina had on the political direction of the American South, an involved study on this state (particular the active Upcountry region) is necessary for why the South as a whole went it's own way, and why this seemed a logical or proper solution to the issues of the time. The combination of overall fear of abolitionists, combined with a strong amount of Southern exceptionalism, can in itself be a potent arrangement. But the economic irregularities of the agriculturally based economic (combined with the optimism of a boom and the despair of recession), and a series of intelligent and strong-willed politicians, demonstrates the truly contentious combatant created by South Carolina in the slavery debate.

            Any reader picking up this book should be prepared for an intense read: it is a very large text, and the information given can be overwhelming. Ford's study is exchaustive, and well researched, but it is a lot of information to take in. This is no casual read, and recommended only for those with a specific focus or interest in the time period or the region. Further, it's focus is very tightly linked to the South Carolina Upcountry, as it says on the cover. Anyone hoping for a wider range view of the South will find themselves dissapointed, and should consider reading this in conjunction with other books if they hope for a clearer view of the region. That being said, it is an excellent book overall, and its tight focus and wide breadth of research, while daunting, provide a great source for information on a region that had such an exceptional affect on the course of American history.

John McCarron

 

Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860, New York: Oxford University Press (1998), 414 pgs.

            Observers of South Carolina’s history too often either overlook South Carolina’s internecine political wars throughout the antebellum period and focus solely on the state’s unified march toward secession, or ignore the latter to explicate the former. Lacy K. Ford, Jr. accomplishes both tasks with aplomb, thanks to an exhaustive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Although each of Ford’s four sections of Origins of Southern Radicalism could stand firmly on their own footing, taken together they trace the social, political, and economic growth of the South Carolina Upcountry along its pathway to secessionism. As the region’s economy grew, planters and plain folk alike valued their independence and perceived self-sufficiency above all else; they ultimately saw secession as the best means for preserving it.

            Ford’s first section deals primarily with the South Carolina Upcountry’s socio-economic foundations. Cotton being king, as James Henry Hammond correctly asserted, it flourished in the South Carolina Upcountry where other crops had failed miserably and its lucre wrought tremendous impact upon the social order. With the growth of personal wealth tied to a staple crop, increasing numbers of Upcountrymen bought slaves; as slaveholding increased, the use of slaveholding as an issue of social prominence increased apace. Despite the growth of cotton as a commercial crop, Ford argues that the region maintained self-sufficiency, and that it never wholly adopted the planter demography or mentality. Using census and tax records, Ford demonstrates that over half of the region’s farms were owned either by yeomen (“plainfolk”) or farmers with fewer than six slaves. In this section Ford also describes how religion consolidated the social gains made by Upcountrymen, even as the first cotton boom fell into the first economic panic.

            Calhoun’s response to the Panic of 1836 provides Ford’s transition into a section discussing “Politics and Power.” He suggests that the “political paranoia and irrationality” indigenous to South Carolinia politics made the state a “breeding ground for reactionary radicalism.” (100) The Nullification Crisis saw this tendency to adopt the Hotspur stance (95) writ large. Ford identifies a number of factors that converged to drive the nullification movement: recovery from economic crisis; continued yet unrecognized over-dependency on market conditions; the tradition and use of radical “country” political ideologies; demographics (as the rising black/slave population engendered cooperation across white socio-economic lines); and, perhaps most importantly, the singular figure and presence of John C. Calhoun. Even after the radical nullification gambit failed, South Carolinians continued to judge the righteousness of their politicians by the example given by Calhoun during the crisis. Hard-liners increasingly pushed the state down an independent political road, with an eye always turned toward protecting distinctly southern interests nationally, and those of the cotton economy at home. Thus, even a figure as mighty as Calhoun could face public scorn if his politics approached accommodationism. As Calhoun reconciled with the national Democratic party, radicals like William Gillmore Simms, James Henry Hammond, and Robert Barnwell Rhett represented the “development of a radical faction in South Carolina whose influence would increase once Calhoun was no longer around to contain it.” (182)

            The dramatic cotton boom of the late antebellum period dramatically altered South Carolina’s fate, and is the focus of Ford’s third major section. Ford traces the rise of the transportation infrastructure and ancillary industry, all of which served to make cotton even more profitable. But as cotton productivity increased, subsistence crop production decreased; South Carolinians were unwittingly losing their independence to a market they could not control. Nevertheless, Upcountrymen sought increasingly “to defend a prosperous economy and a stable labor system against outside interference.” (277)

            Thus, by 1860, the South Carolina Upcountry united its interests with those of the aristocratic and Old South Lowcountry in the protection of “slave-labor republicanism.” (365) Where once the Upcountry had focused its political angst on their under-representation in the South Carolina state house (especially considering the lower chamber’s role in selecting presidential electors), the region viewed itself in the 1860 secession crisis as defending political conservativism. Faced with the threat of an active federal government encroaching into the slave-cotton economy, virtually all South Carolinians – planters and yeomen, Upcountry and Low – set aside their internecine strife, uniting behind secession as the ultimate expression of their republican independence and self-sufficiency.

            Ford has produced a wide-ranging inspection of South Carolina during the antebellum era. Students of the region’s history will find it invaluable, while those interested in antebellum society will still find much of interest in Ford’s use of personal vignettes to illustrate broader arguments. While regionally focused, its arguments are so intellectually engaging, and South Carolina important enough to secessionist history, that amateur and professional scholars alike should find the read quite rewarding.

Matthew A. McNiece

 

Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860. By Lacy K. Ford. New  York: Oxford University Press, 1988.  pp. xiii, 414. ISBN 0195044223. TCU  Classification F 273 F68 1988.
 
Lacy K. Ford, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina, examined the nature of white society and polity in the South Carolina Upcountry, thirteen northwestern counties above the fall line that became a mature cotton-producing region with a burgeoning commercial sector and a hotbed of Southern radicalism. Origins of Southern Radicalism, divided into four sections, linked the region’s political and cultural development to economic and historical conditions, relying heavily on statistics for the former analysis.  Ford’s perspective may be described as qualified economic determinism.

Thesis:  South Carolina embraced radicalism and secession early not because the Lowcountry, large slaveholding gentry dominated state politics, although they did, but because the Upcountry shared a cultural ideal of commitment to personal independence that fostered unified politics, at least in the face of external threats.  Slavery was not a sufficient condition for that ethic but it did contribute to the bonding of yeomen and planters.  The rise of radicalism was facilitated by commercial and political changes of the 1850s involving the spread of the market system, especially in the growing influence of railroads and banking, and the growth of state government reflected in a quadrupling of the annual budget in less than twenty years
 
Ford suggested that the expansion of the market economy and evangelicalism shaped post-Revolutionary South Carolina.  The Upcountry emerged from the Revolution isolated from Charleston and the Tidewater plantations but during the next fifty years it, nourished by short-staple cotton, developed a general prosperity that created a market economy, the basis for the state’s unique social and political harmony.  Ford emphasized the degree to which yeomen predicated actively in the market economy but argued that they remained committed to an ideal of independence based on free, productive households while developing a protective mentalité of resistance to external threats supported by a strict moral code instilled by evangelicalism, the other major influence in moving the Upcountry from frontier to society.
 
Conventional historical wisdom portrays a South Carolina dominated by a powerful gentry who directed the state into radical defense of slavery.  Ford admits the weight of that view but suggested that it is limited, ignoring that South Carolina was the first state to adopt universal male suffrage and that many local elections were hotly contested.  South Carolina’s eventual departure from the political mainstream began after the Nullification crisis, aided by the simultaneous introduction of the Tariff of 1828 and a drop in cotton prices, concerns over the erosion of political power, the state’s political heritage of British influence, its large black population, and the influence of John Calhoun.  South Carolina adopted a unique form of Jacksonian democracy, shaped by perceived external threats, that led to the establishment of political consensus  The development of consensus in response to external opposition killed the development of a two-party system that could have restrained radicalism.  To the extent that political divisions existed they tended to be over local issues having nothing to do with slavery.  No viable opposition existed over the need to defend slavery.
 
The state’s economy boomed from 1848 to 1860, bringing not only prosperity but also infrastructure development in railroading, banking, and trading centers.  The 1850s were the most prosperous decade in history, bestowing benefits on all but more so on the upper classes, making the rich, richer.  That the boom renewed confidence in the cotton economy around the same time that abolition appeared made defense of slavery a unifying theme.  In addition, the 1850s witnessed a drift away from fiscal conservatism as state expenditures increased from $278,806 in 1841 to $1,036,924 in 1858.  The state also became more active in promotion and regulation of economic growth, especially through the State of South Carolina Bank.  The 1850s left the Upcountry struggling with the issue of benefiting from economic developments without surrendering personal independence at the same time that abolition became an national debate.
 
Although anxious the Upcountry was not ready to leave the Union during the crisis over the Compromise of 1850.  Because they saw they saw the northern threat as more remote and feared financial isolation, yeomen of the northwest formed a coalition with the new commercial elites to defeat secession.  However, by 1860 the threat of concentrated power and unchecked power loomed large in the minds of Upcountry whites, largely because the changes of the 1850s made threats to the established order tangible, convincing many that only drastic action would preserve their personal independence.
 
Ford asked how the radical vision of fighting for the ideal slaveholding republic came to triumph?  He suggested that the answer was that it did not, at least not entirely.  South Carolina seceded not because it s citizens sought a  more perfect confederacy but because they believed they the only alternative seemed to be submission to Black Republican rule at the sacrifice of its republican values.  The Upcountry saw secession as a defense of values, as protecting independence from external forces that would push whites into economic dependence in a society in which a free black population would threaten home and family, a perspective shared by both planters and yeomen.

Harold Rich


Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860.  By Lacy K. Ford.  (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1988.  ISBN 0-19-504422-3.
Pp. xiii-414).

South Carolina became a hotbed for radical Southern politics, in part, due to its unique electoral system. The state constitution of 1808 reconciled the differences between the upcountry and lowcountry about representation in the state legislature. The upcountry received more representation based on their greater white populous and the low country received representation based on their greater property values (slaves).  The legislature appointed all public officials in South Carolina including the governor and parish sheriffs. Thus, contests for the state legislature became heated races with the entire makeup of the state and local officials dependent on the outcome.  A politician might emanate from the planter class but those who failed to recognize the independence of the yeoman planters were doomed to defeat at the polls.  By achieving a bare majority in the legislative elections of 1858-1860, the southern radicals successfully pushed the state into secession by stifling all organized resistance.

 South Carolina's political process from 1820-1850 came to represent one man--John C. Calhoun. His hand, seen or unseen, guided all electoral processes during his long tenure in the United States Senate.  Calhoun, despite his personal differences with Andrew Jackson, supported the Democratic Party as the best means of assuring that slavery remained protected in the South.  The Federalist and Whig parties had short and ineffective lives in South Carolina and Calhoun and the Democrats dominated the state as a one party monolith.  This lack of restraint from political parties allowed South Carolina's unique political system to spin wildly out of control.  Despite his intense nationalism, Calhoun came to believe that states rights had a more important role in preserving the union than domination by any regional or Federal laws.  Hence his development and enunciation of the Nullification Crisis against the protective tariff promulgated by the Northern mercantile states in the national Congress at the expense of the Southern agrarian states.  During this period Democrats divided into Unionists and pro-Calhoun Nullifiers.  Later, Calhoun used the secession crisis of 1850 and the Nashville Convention of Southern states as a forum for his states rights and pro-slavery platforms--dividing the party into secessionist and cooperationalist.  After Calhoun's death the continuation of the one party system and the spoils system allowed the radical secessionists to dominate the state on the eve of the Civil War.

 Ford has probed the political, economic, and social history of ante-bellum South Carolina in depth.  He starts by investigating the differences in the yeoman and planter populations in the uplands and comparing them to the lowlands planter class.  Using the data from the 1850 census, he looks at acreage, cash income, slave ownership, and crop production to determine the type of person living in the Piedmont area.  The people were prosperous, most owned a few slaves, most raised cotton, and few owned over 20 slaves or 150 acres.  The author next turns to the evangelical Christian influence in the area but has difficulty tying religion into cotton production and population growth.  Throughout the work the author presents aggregate and personal data reflecting the attitudes of the voters.  Midway through a development of the political climate, the author inserts several chapters on agriculture, railroads, and the economy during the 1850s.  Though perhaps appropriate chronologically, the information is diverting from the political argument.  Finally, the author follows the political ascension of the Radical splinter of the Democratic Party, beginning in days of the early republic, through the nullification crisis, into the first and second session crises.

Using the resources available to him at the University of South Carolina where he trained and taught, the author attempts to explain the influence of economic issues on the political crises leading to South Carolina's secession and the onset of the Civil War.  He presents the theme of his work as determining why the "plain folk of the Old South willingly joined the planter elite to wage a war in defense of slavery."  Defining the more mountainous thirteen district area above the state fall line as the upcountry, the author presents the economic development of South Carolina quite well, giving the reader extensive and useful information on the state.  Unfortunately, he fails to tie this information into his political theme.  Constant repetition and poor mixing of themes make the book slow reading but the depth of the information makes it a useful and unique reference.
 
 
Texas Christian University Watson Arnold