Durden

The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century. By Robert F. Durden. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985).

Robert F. Durden’s The Self-Inflicted Wound did not enjoy a favorable reception among historians following its release in 1985. Critics derided the small book as simplistic. Much of this criticism is unmerited. Durden clearly did not intend for the book to be considered a research monograph and it should not be judged as such. The Self-Inflicted Wound is an interpretative essay on nineteenth-century southern politics and the growth of sectionalism. Durden traces how southern politics devolved from a functional two-party system that characterized Jeffersonian democracy to the Democratic Party’s monopoly following Reconstruction. The book is an accessible discussion of sectionalism for the undergraduate or the general reader. The Self-Inflicted Wound, despite its age, would still serve as an effective introduction to the issue for readers drawn to the subject by the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

The self-inflicted wound Durden describes is “the gradual surrender of the southern white majority, beginning in the 1820s, to the pride, fears, and hates of racism” (p. 132). Durden argues that white supremacy shaped southern politics before, during, and after the Civil War. He is interested in how the South morphed from optimistic and nationalistic during the Jeffersonian era to sullen and defensive after the Civil War. The South, like the North, inherited the American Revolution’s republican ideology of republicanism. Durden writes, “In the case of the South, however, that liberty came increasingly to mean, especially from the 1820s on, the freedom to own slave property, and later the freedom to take that property to the nation’s territories in the West” (p. x).

The first chapter shows how the roots of discontent arose even as two-party politics flourished in the South from 1800–1828. Initially, both regions saw southern slavery as a necessary evil because of social, economic, and racial reasons despite all northern states approving emancipation plans by 1804. Ironically, the War of 1812 sparked talk of secession in the North and fervent nationalism in the South. The dynamic changed with the proposed Tallmadge amendment that would require the emancipation of Missouri slaves as a condition of statehood. Supporters of the amendment launched strong moral attacks on the institution of slavery. Southern politicians unified in response. The states of the Old Northwest, the South’s traditional partner, realigned with the East. The Missouri Compromise in 1820 failed to silence sectional awareness and southerners discovered several political differences with the North. South Carolinians increasingly blamed the protective tariff, sought by northern manufacturers, for the state’s ongoing economic problems. John C. Calhoun, while serving as vice president, developed the argument that a state could nullify an unconstitutional federal law

Durden’s second chapter studies the South and the Second Party System, 1828–1846. During this period, the South began to see its peculiar institution as a positive good rather than a necessary evil. In 1832, South Carolina nullifiers acted on Calhoun’s plan. Other southern states did not react and President Andrew Jackson insisted on enforcing federal law. In 1833, as in 1820, a compromise ended the current controversy without preventing future conflicts. The 1822 Denmark Vesey plot, 1824 Ohio legislature appeal for gradual emancipation and colonization, British abolition, emboldened northern abolitionists, and Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion created a sense of isolation among southerners. Durden identifies the question of why the white South closed ranks in defense of slavery as the central problem in southern history. He notes the increasing identification of race during the nineteenth century and the spread of popular democracy as reasons the nonslaveholding majority aligned with the elites.

The sectional crisis escalates to the eve of disunion in Durden’s third chapter, 1846–1860. In 1846, the Wilmot Proviso to ban slavery in territories acquired from Mexico reignited sectional animosity. The Compromise of 1850 again postponed confrontation but destroyed the Whig Party. Durden presents a flattering portrayal of Stephen Douglas, the often-ridiculed architect of the compromise. Durden writes that Douglas was willing to compromise on sectional issues because of his confidence that slavery would eventually perish. Regardless, Douglas unintentionally sparked controversy with the Kansas-Nebraska bill that led to the birth of the Republican Party, Bleeding Kansas, and a violent confrontation between proslavery men and abolitionists.

The final two chapters cover secession and war, 1860–1865, and Reconstruction and the Democrats’ redemption, 1865–1890. Durden purposefully does not end his narrative with the Civil War. He considers the war, in the context of this essay, just another chapter in the story of the region’s politics.

Texas Christian University Jeff Wells

The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century. By Robert F. Durden. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Robert F. Durden’s The Self-Inflicted Wound, published in 1985, covers the political history of the South from the Jeffersonian Era to Reconstruction. His argument is that the cause of the South’s ultimate split from the Union and its tragic political fate was the product of the majority of white southerners giving in to racism. Before the war, this sentiment was expressed through the defense of chattel slavery and after the war it was expressed through the bitter racism that resulted in the disenfranchisement of blacks throughout the South.

However, Durden only loosely follows that thesis throughout his work. This book is essentially a historiographical synthesis of the South’s political history. He begins with the rise of the Jeffersonian Democrats, describing the backlash in the South against the Federalist and their eventual rise to unchallenged power after the War of 1812. Then he covers Andrew Jackson who, riding a wave of popularity after his victory in the Battle of New Orleans, becomes president in 1828 and inaugurates the second party system. His most important point during this period is that during the antebellum period, all of the political parties had a strong nationalistic outlook. There were Northern and Southern Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats and Whigs continually intermingling. Only as time went on did the sectional tensions begin to divide the nation. He cites western expansion and abolitionism as the main causes. The Whigs became split over the question of expanding slavery into the territories and eventually dissolved as a political force in the South. The Northern Democrats also fell victim to this question and abandoned the southern wing of their party.

Finally, the disparate groups that broke apart reformed and became the Republicans. Durden asserts that this is the first party system that became strictly divided along the North-South paradigm. When Republicans gained the presidency, the South seceded from the Union in an effort to maintain their power to own slaves. After their ultimate defeat, efforts to reform the South’s political system met with failure and a number of laws that disenfranchised black voters were enshrined until the Civil Rights movement. Chattel slavery was replaced with racism and their nationalistic outlook was replaced with a strictly sectional outlook.

Within the historiography, this is a synthesis of Southern political history. It provides a good introduction and overview on the topic, but contributes nothing particularly new to the debate. The argument that chattel slavery and racism were responsible for most of the political developments in the South is certainly nothing new, Durden is just rehashing it in another form. Its sources are difficult to decipher as well. He does not incorporate any notes in his writing and only has a short bibliographical essay at the end of the book, making it difficult for historians to check his information.

The Self-Inflicted Wound is a lukewarm political history of the South. It proposes no new arguments but does provide readers with a broad outlay of Southern history that is accessible to a broad audience. Its clear style makes it usable as a whole or in part for any undergraduate class and it would provide a quick review for comprehensive exams at the graduate level. However, its value is limited by its lack of citation. The inability to check information and piece out what other historians have contributed to this work leads me to say that there are other works out there that would provide better coverage of this topic.

The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century. By Robert F. Durden. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985. 132 pp.

In this brief work, veteran Duke historian Robert F. Durden examines Southern politics between 1800-1890. But with only 132 pages of text, and no footnotes or endnotes, Durden barely has room to summarize some of the key political events and players of that period much less develop his thesis.

His thesis is that the South was transformed from a predominately optimistic and nationalistic region in the Jeffersonian era to one “mired in sullen, defensive sectionalism and bitterly worsening relations between the races” by 1890 due to a “self-inflicted wound,” namely, “the gradual surrender of the southern white majority . . . to the prides, fears, and hates of racism.” (p. 132.) This surrender was kick-started by the debate that ended with the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Up to that point, Durden contends that there was a “national consensus concerning slavery in the South as a necessary evil.” (p. 5). But the controversy over slavery’s expansion into Missouri led Northerners to become increasingly judgmental about that “peculiar institution” while Southerners began to view it as “a positive good, the very cornerstone of southern society and life.” (p. 39.) Concomitantly, the South, “so staunchly nationalistic since 1800, found itself . . . championing states’ rights and strict interpretation of the Constitution” whereas New Englanders, “who for two decades had sought to limit and obstruct federal power, now joined other northerners in supporting a liberal interpretation of the Constitution and the extension of national power.” (p. 15.)

According to Durden, “the central question of antebellum southern history” is why the South “close[d] ranks in defense of slavery,” (p. 39), with historians proffering two main answers to that query. One answer, characterized by Durden as the “lords of the lash” (p. 39) theory, is that an oligarchic and elite group of large slaveholders exercised “hegemonic control over the whole of southern life” (p. 40) and was thus able to orchestrate widespread support for slavery amongst the non-slaveholding white majority. The second theory, which Durden adopts, begins with the notion that “slavery was an arrangement of the races as well as a system of labor.” (p. 42.) As such, non-slaveholding whites, who embraced the “scientific” view common throughout 19^th Century America that blacks were an inferior race, “came increasingly to believe that only the enslavement of blacks made possible the ostensible liberty and equality of all whites.” (p. x.) Consequently, as the white South became more democratic in the antebellum era, white supremacy became more firmly entrenched.

Moreover, white racism continued to reign in the post-war South as whites initially strove to create a “caste system that would keep blacks suspended in a half-way house between slavery and true freedom” (p. 114) only to be temporarily interrupted by Radical Reconstruction. With Reconstruction’s end, the Democratic Party became and remained dominant in the South by appealing “to white racism and exploit[ing] . . . the myths of Reconstruction and its alleged black domination.” (p. 131.)

Could racism’s grip on the white South have ever been loosened during the 19^th Century? Durden seems to think that it could have during the latter stages of the Civil War when Southerners began to debate whether slaves should be used in the Confederate Army. Calling that debate “the fullest and freest discussion of slavery in which the South ever engaged,” Durden opines that it “might have been a turning point in southern history” had white Southerners not “lacked the moral courage and imagination to begin voluntarily to abandon slavery.” (p. 105.) And yet it seems strange to refer to a wartime debate in the South of 1864-1865 as “full” and “free” when any such debate would have been either compelled or heavily informed by stark military exigencies. Moreover, had the South actually freed its slaves at the eleventh hour to fight for the Confederacy, would such an act have exhibited “moral courage” and “imagination” or merely panic and desperation?

Durden also assails those Confederate political figures who resisted some of Jefferson Davis’s drastic wartime measures on grounds of states’ rights as having forgotten that “the principle of states’ rights had always been not an end in itself but a means to an end,” (p. 92), namely, the preservation of slavery. Durden wonders whether those states’ rights Confederates “had simply become so accustomed to the nay-saying role of a fearful yet proud, defiant minority” (p. 92) that they failed to see that their attitude was detrimental to the Confederacy’s war ends. Or perhaps they actually did believe in states’ rights, a possibility that Durden does not even entertain, presumably because it runs counter to his thesis of white racism uber alles.

In sum, The Self-Inflicted Wound is either too short to do Durden’s thesis justice or else too long for what it’s worth.

The title of this book succinctly sums up it thesis: the Southern United States bears much of the responsibility for the turmoil, violence and tragedy that marred the region during the 19th Century. This self-inflicted wound was unnecessary. There were many opportunities during this period when the region could have changed course and rewritten its history, but it repeatedly chose not to, thereby condemning itself to a bloody civil war and painful reconstruction. Author Robert Durden says it was this persistent obstinacy to abandon its racist, white supremacist institutions that left the South with few viable options.

During the preceding century both North and South had seen slavery as a necessary evil. Slavery was not an issue during this period as both sides were focused on working together, first, during the Revolution to defeat the British, and afterwards, on forming a new government. It was not until 1804 that slavery ended in the North. When the crisis over the Missouri Compromise erupted in 1819-1820, the institution of slavery thereafter became a chronic national irritant that would not go away.

Another flash point for the South, and especially South Carolina, were the tariffs of 1824 and 1828. Since the South sold much of its staple crops overseas, it preferred the federal government taking a “hands off” approach to its commerce. Southerners hated tariffs and preferred free trade. Led by its senator, John C. Calhoun, South Carolina voted in 1832 to nullify the federal tariff laws. The Compromise of 1833 ended the Nullification Controversy, but did not settle the federal government-states rights debate that was to remain until the Civil War. The tariff issue also demonstrated that South Carolina was at this time the lone radical slave state; none of others had followed the Palmetto State’s lead with their own nullification votes.

According to Durden, up until this time the South had been comprised of many differing political and social viewpoints. In Southern politics, the two-party system was alive and well. However, as the issue of slavery kept rearing its head, the South became defensive, polarized and isolated. Northern newspapers labeled slavery as racist and morally wrong. As the institution increasingly came under attack, Southerners united in a sectional chorus of justification and defense. Slavery ceased to be a necessary evil and now became a positive good for the South, the backbone of society. It was a beneficial system for all involved. Yet, as Durden argues, if it was so beneficial, why were whites so terrified of slave insurrections throughout this period? Southern paranoia continued to grow, with Denmark Vesey’s plot in 1822, Nat Turner’s slave revolt in 1831 and John Brown’s raid in 1859. Somewhere, back in the far recesses of the Southern psyche, may have lurked the notion that perhaps slavery was not God’s will, as evidenced by the myriad problems and strife it caused the South from 1820-1860.

Instead of reevaluating slavery and its attendant costs, the South increasingly adopted a defensive and isolated sectional party line. As a result, divergent opinions disappeared in the region, as did the two-party political system by 1860. In this discussion, Durden raises the question of what if the South had initiated a program of gradual emancipation for the blacks? He argues that Reconstruction and long-term race relations would have been significantly different if the South had chosen such a course. In the end, white Southerners refused to make any racial changes to their rigid and stratified society. With the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, these changes were subsequently forced upon the South against its will. For as Durden points out, even after the war the majority of white Southerners did everything they could to keep the old racial order intact. The former slave states stubborn refusal to adopt a moderate Reconstruction plan in 1866 ensured the region was subjected to military rule until 1877, when troops were finally withdrawn.

Any gains made by Southern blacks during Reconstruction were quickly erased, when Redemption Democrats gained control of the region in 1877. Despite attempts by the Readjuster and Populist parties to take control, the Redeemer Democrats maintained an iron grip on Southern politics and society. Violence, terrorism and intimidation were tactics commonly employed by the Democrats. With slavery no longer an option, racist whites sought out many other methods to ensure their continued supremacy over blacks. When Congress outlawed black codes, the South came up with a new peculiar institution, Jim Crow.

In closing, Durden remarks that “rather than reflect the optimism and nationalism of the Jeffersonian era, the South in 1890 was mired in sullen, defensive sectionalism and bitterly worsening relations between the races. The transition from Jefferson…to even the best Redeemer Democrats says much about the essentially tragic political fate of the South in the nineteenth century. That fate was no doubt affected by many developments, but surely a self-inflicted wound was the greatest single cause: the gradual surrender of the southern white majority, beginning in the 1820s, to the pride, fears, and hates of racism.” (P. 132)

The Self-Inflicted Wound amounts to a damning condemnation of Southern politics in the 19th Century. Durden does not tilt towards any Northern bias in this work; Northerners are presented as equally racist during this period. While people in the North may have felt that Southern slaves should be freed, they did not want them moving to New York or Massachusetts. Most Northerners were in favor of colonization schemes for repatriating blacks back to Liberia in West Africa. A bibliography essay closes the book, with the author making personal recommendations for further reading on different topics and time periods of the 19th Century. Durden cites mostly secondary sources as his main research tools for his work, which he defends as sufficient for a book of this overall scope. This is a thought-provoking and hard-hitting work that takes Confederate Lost Cause mythology to task. The Self-Inflicted Wound would be well suited for both graduate and undergraduate history courses.

The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century. By Robert F. Durden. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Pp. x, 150. ISBN 0-8131-0307-X.)

Robert Durden's book is part of a series called, "New Perspectives on the South," the goal of which is to provide a comprehensive view of the region's history and each volume represents scholarship on a designated time period or ideology. Durden's book takes the reader chronologically through the morphing of the South's ideology from a "predominantly nationalistic, optimistic mood" in the Jeffersonian period to an entirely different region of sullenness, and a "chronically defensive" mood after the Civil War. Durden traces change from nationalism to sectionalism and from a two-party system to "democratic hegemony" (ix). Durden believes the change occurred directly as a result of the region's support of slavery. The title of the book derives from what Durden believes was the largest political flaw of the South, a "self-inflicted wound," caused by the "gradual surrender of the southern white majority, beginning in the 1820's, to the pride, fears, and hates of racism" (132). The South is often characterized as somewhat of an enigma in social, political and economic theory in America, and Durden attempts to describe its contentious history with the issue of slavery in the forefront.

Durden believes that during the Jeffersonian era, politics was positive (or, as positive as it could be) but in the era that followed, pro-slavery sentiment stagnated any growth in political thought, as well as in cultural progression. Durden believes that the slavery issue influenced the South's development and he traces its effect on society as it changes for the worse. His scope of discussion includes the debates of Missouri becoming a state and the Tallmadge Amendment through Reconstruction and beyond to 1890. He also asserts that for a myriad of reasons, all resulting from the pro-slavery stance that, "no nationally outstanding political leaders" were produced at all during the latter part of the century (ix).

In his discussion of liberty, Durden says that while both the North and the South were proud of their ideology of "liberty," the word held differing connotations for each region. For the Southerners, Durden says that 'liberty' came to mean the liberty to own slaves and the additional freedom to take them wherever they wanted - including into Federal territory. Durden points out that while the slave-holding population of the South was a minority, that even the nonslaveholding majority came to believe in the South's right to hold slaves. Indeed, the non-slaveholding majority believed that the only way to ensure equality of all whites was the enslavement system.

Durden extensively discusses the changes to the two-party system, which occurred because of slavery. Durden says that the first party system emerged in the "1790's in response to Alexander Hamilton's economic policies and to the foreign policy dilemmas confronting the young nation" (5), and then spawned into the two groups of Federalist and Republican (also called the Anti-Federalists). He believes that slavery and later racism divided or, in some cases, united, Southern whites. Durden suggests that the slave issue and the desire by the slaveholders to move into new territories with their slaves destroyed the Whig party. Although long assumed to be unified, parties were frequently at odds over elections. Durden believes that political disunity ceased during Reconstruction because white southerners were unified in their fear of a black political party with power; this created a unity based upon a common enemy.

Durden believes the end of the Civil War did not mean the South immediately recognized their prejudices, but rather, they reestablished the "supremacy of the white race by means other than the outright enslavement of blacks" (107). He further argues that in actuality, one result of the War was to produce a Southern nationalism. After the War, a new relationship with the slaves was based on subordination of blacks which was carried out through intimidation of minorities at the voting box, violence, and resistance to any doctrine of "equality." Durden finally asserts that the South's greatest "enemy in the nineteenth century, in short, proved all too sadly to be the great majority of Southern whites" (132).

Durden's book is a good overview of Southern politics and the influence of slavery on the developing Southern region. With a history which is marked with pro-slavery sentiment, exploitation, war, defeat, arrested economic development and poverty, Durden describes the evolution of a region as viewed through the lens of cultural expectations and institutions. He portrays a region that was heavily vested in the idea of states' rights, and equally vested in the idea of slavery both from non-slaveholders and the slaveholding minority. He also clearly believes that after Jefferson, politics in the South went awry because of slavery which later developed into white supremacy. His relegating of the institution of slavery as the single most influential factor of politics in the South leaves one wondering about other elements which may have also played into the "sullen sectionalism." Specifically, the influence of religion and its impact on slavery surely had a large role to play in the developing region. Additionally, it is puzzling how eras after 1890 were divided sharply into two-party systems if Durden believes that uniting against the common enemy of black power is what caused a hegemony of sorts in the years following Reconstruction. The book is easily accessible which is remarkable considering the complex and often conflicting cultural and political threads of Southern society during the era. The identity of the South can be largely understood in this synopsis of 90 years of political and social events.

Texas Christian University

Diana Vela