Mind and the American Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes. By Lewis P. Simpson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c. 1989. Pp. xiv+110).

            The Civil War represents a traumatic and potentially transformational event in American history, the effects of which Simpson attempts to capture.  Simpson’s book, Mind and the American Civil War, arose from several lectures he gave as part of the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History at Louisiana State in 1988, where he was the first LSU professor and literary scholar asked to speak.  Examining the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simpson reconstructs an image of both a Southern and New England mindset.  He is particularly interested in how two fairly provincial worldviews connected to one another, both before and after the Civil War.

            Simpson uses Thomas Jefferson as his template for the Southern mind.  He focuses particularly on Jefferson’s founding of the University of Virginia and the new institution’s relationship with Harvard, the nation’s oldest college and standard-bearer for New England’s intellectual tradition.  Jefferson saw his university as the continuation of his project for an Enlightenment philosophy that would govern both the South and the rest of the new nation.  Simpson points out the irony that Jefferson’s death came at the time when evangelical religion, decidedly un-intellectual in the former president’s mind, became the dominant mode of thought amongst Southern elites.  Approaching the critical slavery issue, Simpson notes Jefferson’s writings that suggested emancipation (perhaps the end result of Enlightenment), though accepting the Africans’ inferiority.  The new evangelical elite in the South rejected Jefferson’s language, entrenching their support for slavery and began perceiving themselves as besieged by abolitionists and prying New England eyes.

            The New England mind, as Simpson sees it, derives from the tradition of Puritan settlers.  This intellectual tradition attempted to create, much as existed within the South, a sense of a localized nationhood, a New England nation, focused on the cultural center Boston.  He places Emerson at the end of this tradition, holding its banner through the Civil War.  Refocusing on slavery, Simpson points out that Emerson was not a long-time abolitionist, only taking up that cause following the Compromise of 1850 (which also turned Emerson against Compromise supporter Daniel Webster).  Even then, Emerson’s rejection of slavery was almost purely ethical, seeing the institution as a restraint on the greater destiny of the United States, rather than a humanitarian concern.  Simpson ends this second essay speculating on the famous bronze relief of the 54th Massachusetts, a black regiment.  The relief celebrates the martyrdom of its commander, Robert Gould Shaw, dying as he did to save the nation and the faceless blacks that he led into battle at Fort Wagner.

            For Emerson, the Civil War represented a great opportunity to impose New England’s education and virtue on the backwards and anti-intellectual South, and to preserve the West from Southern infection.  The necessity of eliminating slavery changed Emerson’s view of New England from a nation unto itself (arguably able to secede) into the greater cause of Union.  Much as he would try and set this Unionism as an avenue for advancing New England’s cause, this subjugation to Union allowed for the creation of a new American mindset that drew from nation’s sections.  If the South could no longer earn regional freedom, then neither could New England.  Even Emerson cannot escape this connection, relying on the Southerner Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence to help form the basis of this Unionism.  In his conclusion, Simpson considers the new connection between the regions, characterized by William Faulkner’s decision to send Quentin Compson to Harvard.  Still clinging tenuously to the dying South, Compson goes to the center of American literature, creating a distinctively American hybrid that emphasizes both regions and yet struggles to reconcile their different histories.

            The greatest weakness in Simpson’s account is the relative lack of diversity in the sources.  He relies almost exclusively on the writings of Jefferson and Emerson, deviating mostly to describe other works they would have been familiar with and referenced.  This narrows his intellectual scope and calls into question the extent to which his conclusions can accurately describe the larger Southern or New England mindset.  And yet, Jefferson and Emerson, due to their prolific writing and constant referencing, can open some windows into their respective sectional ideals.  The Civil War’s place in the transformation of the Old South is clear, but Simpson makes an important contribution to understanding its role in changing New England as well.  The respective sectionalism of each region further lends to the idea that little did separate the North and South in the antebellum period.

Texas Christian University                                                                                          Keith Altavilla

Mind and the American Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes.  By Lewis P. Simpson.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Lewis P. Simpson based this book on the 1988 Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History in which he was invited as a member of the literary faculty.  He seeks to explain “the complex, fateful, even tragic connection between the South and New England.”(p. xiii)  Simpson does this through the writings mainly of Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson although he does incorporate the writings of others during the antebellum period.

At the outbreak of the Civil War George Ticknor became suspected of being a secessionist because of his declaration “that Lincoln and the Republicans had transformed the presidency into a dictatorship and that the war was being fought at the expense of constitutional government.”(p. 9)  Although he held prosouthern sentiments Ticknor did not even think of deserting his New England.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the truth of the Republic had been invested not in New England but rather in the South.  With an increased tendency of both New Englanders and southerners to doubt the motives of the other Simpson finds a falling off “from the transcendent moral and intellectual context of the mind that had made the American Revolution.” (p. 10) 

Simpson describes the time of Jefferson’s death as the point when liberalism in Virginia lost its coherent thrust toward fulfillment.  He attributes this to the depletion of its soil and also an awareness of the relationship of slavery to mind.  Throughout Jefferson’s career there is a confrontation between mind and slavery.  Through reading his works closely Simpson finds that he had a sense of irony on the subject but suppressed it in obedience to the culture of which he played and integral role, the culture of a slave society that envisioned itself as an essential part of the expansion of the polity of free mind.

Simpson goes on to explore the question of New England nationalism.  Within the distinction that New England intellectuals made between the culture of mind in New England and the culture of mind, or lack there of, in the South is not found a cohesive American nationalism.  For years Emerson was alienated from the Union because it included the southern states, he even encouraged secession from the Union for New England and pushed free states to resist Washington.  He only became a Unionist with the coming of the Civil War when it appeared that through the Union the possibility existed to destroy the South and to imprint the American nation with the stamp of New England culture. 

Simpson argues that the basis of the present American nation-state, laid through the Civil War, was not the true desire of Emerson.  He instead envisioned a New England, rather than Washington, center.  This shows that New Englanders made a strategic alliance with Washington power only to benefit New England.  Emerson often celebrated Massachusetts as the parent of the North as well as the Western States through “her teachers, preachers, journalists and books” and her “religious, literary and political opinion.”(p. 71) 

Simpson focuses not on the lost cause of the South but rather that of New England.  In the defeat of the South in the Civil War, New England was itself defeated.  “The truth of the New England nation would have been fulfilled in New England’s becoming the embodiment of the born-again American Republic.” (p. 90)  Instead, with the conquest of the South, New England was together with the South and West absorbed to form the modern nation-state.  “The defeated nation of the South strangely became the lost cause of the New England nation.” (p. 90)

Simpson sought to explain a rather complex issue through using a fairly small number of scholarly writings.  This proved the only major problem with the book which he attributes in his epilogue as due to time constraints.  Overall this is a well written book and takes an interesting look at a lost cause rarely explored.

Leah D. Parker

Mind and the American Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes. By Lewis P. Simpson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

 In Lewis P. Simpson’s Mind and the American Civil War:  A Meditation on Lost Causes, the author provides readers with a new interpretation on the consequences of the Civil War.  Simpson states that while both New England and the South differed in their visions of what the Union meant, both of their action symbolized what they believed to be the true Union.   Furthermore, the author discusses how “the failure of the antebellum southern society was also the failure of the antebellum New England society” (32).  While individuals such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams played vital roles in creating these societies, Simpson maintains that the Civil War would eventually lead to the demise of both New England and Southern societies.

In Simpson’s opening chapter, the author discusses Thomas Jefferson’s views in regards to slavery.  Although Jefferson condemned the peculiar institution, Simpson considered Jefferson’s statements as hypocritical because the Virginian planter owned slaves.  While Simpson questions Jefferson’s remarks about slavery, the author does show some leniency towards Jefferson because he viewed the Virginian planter as a product of his times.  As a politician, Jefferson could verbal ridicule the peculiar institution, however, as a plantation owner, who required slaves to obtain maximum profits, Jefferson could not act upon his own beliefs.  Simpson remarks that Jefferson believed that African American slaves needed to be emancipated, but the Virginian thought that it would take an act of God in order to accomplish this feat.

Following Simpson’s essay about Thomas Jefferson, the author moves into a discussion about Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Simpson remarks that Emerson was one of the most noted fire-eaters from New England.  Emerson’s attitude reflected a growing estrangement from a union of slaveholders, but it also represented an opposition to a Constitution that officially sanctioned the peculiar institution.  Simpson states that Emerson thought that the only way to preserve the nation was to undertake a cultural conquest of the South.

While Emerson favored the preservation of the United States, he held very little regard towards the African American slaves.  Emerson remarked that Southern slaves “existed on the plane between animals and vegetables” (54).  In addition, Emerson maintained that the horrors of the Middle Passage were only a fraction more violent than the conditions that the slaves had become accustom to in Africa.  Although Emerson believed that an abolitionist could emancipate the African American slaves, he stated that the slaves’ lives could not be saved unless they willingly accepted the words of God.  Simpson remarks that while Emerson wanted to avoid sectionalism, the author maintains that the union that Emerson coveted would be a nation of inequality.

In the work’s final essay, Simpson describes how the Civil War led to the defeat of Confederate nationalism as well as New England nationalism.  Simpson maintains that neither Richmond nor Boston was victorious in the war, but rather Washington emerged as the true victor in the Civil War.  Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the United States was referred to in a plural sense, but Simpson states that as the war progressed individuals began to perceive the nation as a single entity.  While some scholars state that the conclusion of the Civil War brought about the end of chattel slavery, Simpson argues that the war not only destroyed the old union of sovereign states, but it also produced the America of present times.

One of the work’s weaknesses stems from the complex material covered within the various chapters.  Although the work is only one hundred and twenty pages, an individual should not attempt to read Simpson’s work in a few sittings.  I would recommend that an individual should read about twenty pages a day, and then he or she should contemplate the information in order to obtain a better grasp of the literature.

Aside from this criticism, I would still recommend Simpson’s work for a graduate history course because it offers readers an interesting look into the Southern mind during the antebellum era.  In addition, the essays within Simpson’s book would provide graduate students with great discussion topics.  Furthermore, Simpson’s work offers readers a fresh look at some of the ramifications of the Civil War.

Kevin Brady