Medieval Technology and Social Change

Medieval Technological Innovation

More than fifty years after its first publication, Lynn White, Jr.’s Medieval Technology & Social Changecontinues to call forth a debate among historians with respect to Medieval technology. As articles by Bernard S. Bachrach, D. A. Bullough, and Alex Roland attest, White’s important work at the very least forms the cornerstone of the fascinating topic of technological innovation and the rise of social groups during the Middle Ages. White expounds upon the importance of the stirrup and how this seemingly insignificant implement spurred feudalism, how new technologies in agriculture led to a surge in population, and how the advances of machine power in the lives of Medieval peoples led to urbanization. 

The thesis of Medieval Technologypoints to the significance of technology during a time period that is usually considered as technically moribund. White begins his work centering around a seemingly inconsequential implement: the stirrup. White argues that the stirrup enabled Charles Martel to engage in mounted shock combat, which “inevitably” led to feudalism. Prior to the stirrup mounted warriors had little stability. Riders used saddles that would prevent them from falling over the horse’s tail, but saddles did not add lateral stability, something which was much needed during combat.White also argues that mounted combatants who used two-handed lances would have been compelled to lay the reins on the “horse’s neck and to guide him solely by voice and pressure of the knees at the most critical moments of battle.”Essentially, mounted warriors would not have had much of an advantage over regular foot soldiers because of the lack of stability and the occasional loss of control of the mount. 

The foot-stirrup began as a way for riders to control their mounts without losing stability and the use loss of control of the mount. Developed in China during the fifth century, the foot-stirrup added to the effectiveness of the mounted fighter.The the stirrup evolved and spread west, White declares that under the direction of Charles Martel, the stirrup helped spur European feudalism. Now that riders could engage in mounted shock combat, held in place on their mounts by stirrups, Martel began to seize ecclesiastical properties to endow the growing use of cavalry. According to White, “mounted warriors could only be maintained in large numbers by landed endowment,” and so in effect, history has the stirrup to thank for European feudalism. 

Moving on, Medieval Technology and Social Change goes on to explain the importance of the plow in Medieval society and how it spurred a shift of power, wealth, and resources within Europe. White puts great emphasis on the plow and argues that it was the first application of non-human power to agriculture For the first time, with the harness the plow substituted animal power for human power. As the first, the plow helped to usher in the manorial system in Europe. The plow had many advantages. It could handle clods better than previous rudimentary implements, saved peasant labor, and increased the area of arable land. Significantly, White gives credit to the heavy plow for changing the shape of fields from squarish to long and narrow. This shift in field shape particularly galvanized the communal aspect of villages. Villagers situated their arable fields next to each other and, with this arrangement, all fields were productive for the benefit of the whole community. Through the cooperative labor of many peasants, these communities were a primitive form of the manorial economy that Northern Europe would later see.

White contends that the plow and the new farming technologies it inspired spurred a population upsurge because more food was made available. However, he is cautious in that although the new productivity that made the heavy plow possible quickly increased the population, it was only adopted in areas already enjoying a certain density of settlement. In conjunction with a balanced approach between herding and agriculture, the heavy plow produced an unprecedented prosperity and vigor in the Frankish heartland. Man became nature’s exploiter. 

The plow and new farming technologies combined to expand production, made possible the accumulation of surplus foods that would spearhead the population growth, made practical the growth of leisure time that would lead to the development of skilled artisans and merchants, and were responsible for urbanization. European peasant society was reshaped with a bursting vigor. 

White begins his analysis of an agricultural revolution on the plow, saying, “the heavy plow is only the first major element in the agricultural revolution.” After the plow, the harness, in conjunction with nailed horseshoe, made the horse an economic and military asset. There were advantages for the peasant population to utilize equine power over oxen. Farm horses were stronger than oxen and had more endurance.Use of the horse-drawn plow soon became standard in European agriculture.

White contends that Medieval peasants soon developed another method of farming that would revolutionize agriculture. Known as the “greatest agricultural novelty of the Middle Ages in Western Europe,” the triennial system of crop rotation allowed peasants to produce more crops and enriched the soil. The horse-drawn plow and triennial field planting “increased the returns from the labor of the Northern peasant,” raised the standard of living, and consequently the ability to buy manufactured goods. Again, White emphasizes the surplus of food that would have been made available, that would ultimately propel urbanization.

The stirrup, the heavy plow, new farming technologies, the switch to horse from oxen, and the horse all gave way to power technology. Water was the first source of power to be tamed. Water wheels and mills were implemented to mill crops and even to treat cloth and hemp. In the thirteenth century, “windmills became one of the most typical features of the landscape of the great plains of northern Europe.” Windmills assisted Medieval people in the manufacture of textiles and grinding grain just to cite a few examples. Vapor and steam were harnessed to aid fire combustion as a bellows. Jets of steam would also turn turbines and eventually the steam-turbine was developed. Hot air and air under pressure were also utilized by Europeans. In the late fifteenth century, for example, engineers were “setting in the flues small  turbines geared to turn a spit.” Eventually, rockets, cannons, and other primitive forms of guns and explosives would be exploited as a result of using air as a source of power.  

White presents a charming case for the Medieval control of gravity. Torsion, by way of the twisting of fibers, was developed in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. However, this method of gravitational control proved unsatisfactory because elasticity issues in certain climates. In the thirteenth century, technicians used gravity to harness one of their most significant problems: the need for an accurate and reliable clock. Not only did Medieval people explore sources of power like gravity, but they also invented ways to control and guide this power. As the middle of the fourteenth century passed, clocks became a status symbol in communities. Clocks were intricate, elaborate, and coveted. In spite of the enthusiasm and eagerness that Medieval people chased the accurate measurement of time, the design for a working clock did not come from clockmakers, but instead White argues that “the interdependence of all aspects of technology” borrowed from military engineers initiated the standard clock.

While modernist thinking in Europe and the United States has touted western civilization as the greatest ever, or “The West is Best” mantra, White’s Medieval Technological Innovation paints a noteworthy difference. In nearly every significant development, from the rudimentary forms of stirrups, the water wheel, artillery and cannon fire, and farming, White denotes that most original ideas developed in the Orient. Far from diminishing western influence, White explains the origins of objects or ideas, and then goes on to document the way in which these things were influenced by Europeans. For instance, White’s foremost implement, the foot-stirrup, probably originated in China.

Bernard Bachrach gives White due credit in his critique of Medieval Change and Social Technology.Looking to the future, Bachrach advocates for the more frequent use of archaeology to back up White’s contentions regarding the stirrup. Bachrach also interprets the data differently than White, by claiming that the Carolingian world was not as impressed with the stirrup as White leads readers to believe. Bachrach makes another important fact that White omits: the armies of Charles Martel and those of his sons excelled in siege warfare in which horsemen play at most a limited role. His statements infer that the stirrup, although it may have been used, would not have been a necessity in early Medieval battles, especially those of Charles Martel. Finally, Bachrach argues that Charles Martel did not make use of heavily armed horsemen in his military force that would have required the use of securing armed support and lands that White avows led to the European Feudal system.

Alex Roland provides an informative critique of Lynn White, Jr.’s Medieval Technology and Social Change.Roland begins with a succinct summarization of Medieval Technology, but moreover goes on to address several attacks against White’s work. Foremost is White’s argument that the stirrup is innately tied to feudalism. Roland’s main point is that White did not mean to intimate that the stirrup inevitably lead to feudalism, but that the stirrup made the succeeding social changes possible. Roland also defends White from the harsh criticism, notably from P. H. Sawyer and R. H. Hilton. Roland argues that Sawyer and Hilton misinterpreted what White was trying to convey. Namely, they “refuted arguments that White did not make, inferred motives that White did not manifest, and accused him of views he did not hold.” Roland does concede that the nature of White’s writing leaves room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. “He (White) favored evidence that supported his argument, apparently overlooking some.” Above all, Roland decides that Medieval History is better for having White’s Medieval Technology and Social Change. Roland sees the work as a challenge to the scholarly community to revise and accept or revise and edit White’s conclusions, something that cannot help but further our understanding of all history. 

Catherine Smith Fulgham

birth: October 23, 1838
location: Carroll County, Georgia
death: April 30, 1894
location: Van Zandt County, Texas

father:
mother:

spouse: Marquis de Lafayette Fulgham

marriage to Marquis de Lafayette Fulgham: March 13, 1861

1870 census

1880 census

burial

children with Marquis de Lafayette Fulgham:

William Edmond Fulgham - 1861
George Thomas Fulgham
Lou Nettie Fulgham
John M Fulgham

Henry Jackson Fulgham

Wiley de Lafayette Fulgham
James A Fulgham - 1878

Topics in the History of Pre-Modern Europe

Writing Assignments

1. Pirenne Thesis - Book Review

2. The Making of Europe - Book Review

3. Medieval Technology and Social Change - Book Review

4. Plague and the End of Antiquity - Book Review

5. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages - Book Review

6. Charlemagne - Book Review

7. The Inheritance of Rome - Book Review

8. The Rise of Western Christendom - Book Review

The Making of Europe

The Making of Europe

In The Making of Europe, Christopher Dawson sets out to rewrite European History from a European point-of-view, with the goal of understanding the unity of the common civilization instead of a national identity. He advocates for Europe to develop a common European consciousness and a sense of its historic and organic unity. Dawson argues that there should not be a separate history for each country, but a common history intertwined with all. The Making of Europe adeptly corroborates Dawson’s thesis, while also addressing the reasons behind the fall of The Roman Empire as a result of turmoil in the Empire, classical tradition and Christianity, the Barbarian invasions, and the spread of Islam. Dawson’s book is about the people and cultures of Europe, not just those of the  Roman Empire and Mediterranean. 

Dawson and Henri Pirenne seem to be somewhat on the same page with regards to their notions of civilization. Pirenne gives more responsibility to the fall of the Roman Empire to that of the spread of Islam than does Dawson. But, Dawson seems to be able to see the ‘big picture’ better than Pirenne. Although there were crushing Barbarian invasions, Dawson asserts that the breach with the old tradition of culture was far less sudden and less complete than that which occurred at the beginning of the Iron Age. He goes into much more detail on the Barbarians way of life than does Pirenne. Dawson understands the tribal nature of Barbarian culture, one that was a tribal society with personal freedom, loyalty, self-respect, heroic traditions, devotion towards community, and moral and spiritual development that were far in advance of the material culture known in the Roman Empire.In many ways these tribal society factors are of greater significance than the sheer opulence of the Roman culture. In short, kinship was more important in Barbarian society than citizenship.

In general, Dawson depicts the Barbarians as a group of people with mixed descent and heritage, all with a more or less combined culture. The tribes integrated with and overlapped each other. When one group was dominant for many years, another would be sure to dominate later. Readers are left with a fluid image of the Barbarian culture.

Dawson gives credit to the Ostrogothic kingdom as the direct source of the movement which destroyed the unity of the Roman Empire and created new Barbarian kingdoms in the West. The defeat of the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople by Barbarians forced the Roman capital and government to be moved to Italy. This movement prepared the way for the disintegration of the Western Empire.Dawson shows how the scene was set for the Roman Empire to crumble. The spread of Islam and the awakening of the East were just the icing on the cake to bring the Empire down.

Another important aspect of European culture that Dawson expounds upon is the religious way of life. Unlike other oriental religions, Christianity thrived because “it possessed a system of ecclesiastical organization and a principle of social authority that distinguished it from all the other religious bodies of the age”.Civic institutions, the basis of ancient society, were replaced by the Church.Dawson also points to a reversal of societal roles, where the Bishop would ascend to become the most important figure in the community, instead of the municipal magistracy.Dawson states that Europe owes its political existence to Rome, spiritual unity to the Catholic Church, and intellectual culture to the Classical Tradition.

The literal making of Europe would not be complete without the East. By the third century, Dawson claims that a new culture had arisen due to influences from the East. The beginning of the Persian kingdom belonging to the Sassanids in A.D. 226, was most epoch-making event of the third century. It gave rise to a new oriental world-power, saw a reassertion of native Iranian power, and started the tradition of culture against the hegemony of Hellenistic civilization that would dominate Europe for five hundred years. “The coming of Islam is the great fact which dominates the history of the seventh and eighth centuries, and it affects the subsequent development of Medieval civilization.” The spread of Islam was also “the last act of the thousand years of interaction between East and West, the complete victory of the oriental spirit which had been gradually encroaching on the Hellenistic world since the downfall of the Seleucid monarchy. Mohammed was the answer of the East to the challenge of Alexander.” 

Similarly to Pirenne, Dawson sets the seventh century as the end of the last phase of ancient Mediterranean civilization and the beginning of the Middle Ages. In addition to the spread of Islam the Muslim culture began expanding. Despite the loss of political unity within the Islamic empire, Muslim culture thrived. The tenth century was the beginning of a Persian Renaissance and the golden age of literature and science. Western Europe was not immune to the spread of Islam. Dawson maintains that Western culture “grew up under the shadow of the more advanced civilization of Islam, and it was from the latter rather than from the Byzantine world that medieval Christendom recovered its share in the inheritance of Greek science and philosophy.”

Dawson gives immense attention to Charlemagne and the Carolingian Age. In point of fact, Dawson argues that it was the personal influence of Charlemagne that inspired the greatest achievement of the Carolingian Age: the gathering together of the scattered elements of the classical and Patristic traditions and their reorganization as the basis of a new culture. The Carolingian Age saw a return to scholarship that changed the face of the written word. The revision of scripts and calligraphy are hallmarks of this important era of the Middle Ages. Art and architecture also saw advancements during this time period. Dawson again points to the imperial influence of Charlemagne as the founder of “Holy Roman” architecture. On art, Dawson says, “it is in miniature-painting and illumination that the mixed art of the Carolingian period is seen to best advantage.”

The Carolingian abbey was perhaps the most important aspect in the history of early medieval civilization. The institution was based on a purely agrarian economy, but still embodied the highest spiritual and intellectual culture of the age. Monasteries were also great centers of trade. They fulfilled a primitive idea of banks and insurance societies. “It was owing to the work of the monsters that the Carolingian culture was able to survive the fall of the Carolingian Empire.”

When one considers Dawson’s historical output, consideration of his understanding of totalitarianism’s nature and his opposition to it must be given. This view of totalitarianism has been linked by some researchers as developing in preparatory school when Dawson was a boy. In addition, “one of Dawson’s chief catalytic intellectual and spiritual guides in young adulthood was John Henry Newman,” who Dawson would later credit as foreseeing totalitarianism’s precursors.

Christopher Dawson was likely greatly influenced by his upbringing in England. The grandson of several generations of clergymen, coming of age in a medieval castle-like dwelling, and the actual town in which he was raised, all gave him a “dual perception of reality as both time- and culture-linked.” He was the century’s leading historian of the Catholic Church, so rumination must also be given to his close association of Catholicism. Dawson “saw totalitarianism as part of modernity’s growing secularization of culture,” and concluded that it needed a response. Schwartz points out that “Dawson’s views on totalitarianism molded his attitudes toward topics as diverse as fascism and communism, World War II, the welfare state, decolonization, America’s role in Western civilization, education, European unity, and religious ecumenism.” 

Pirenne Thesis

As a Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne challenged the long-held belief that the decline of civilization occurred because of the Germanic invasions in the Roman Empire. Renaissance and Reformation thinkers, Enlightenment philosophers, and Modernist historians all pointed to the Germanic invasions that begin in the fifth century as giving rise to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Instead, Pirenne points to the swift and surprising spread of Islam as the reason behind the break with traditional antiquity. Islam cut off trade in the Mediterranean, thus making the Mediterranean Sea and Musulman lake. For the first time in history, the center of life shifted northward from the Mediterranean. 

Pierenne states that although there was a flood of Germanic immigration to the Roman Empire, the invaders were simply absorbed into the Empire. The German language died away. The Gothic conception of royalty was lost. All Germanic law was crushed and the organization of the judiciary was entirely Roman. In Spain and Gaul, the Germanic character was modified by Roman manners and Roman institutions. In the Empire, royal insignia went from Germanic to Roman. The agricultural system of the Roman Empire continued without addition after the invasions. Spanish agriculture bore no resemblance to Germanic agriculture. Social classes remained the same. The organization of great estates remained unchanged.With regards to navigation, Pirenne argues that it was just as active under the Empire as after the invasions, an important distinction that will be noted later. Trade was not greatly affected. Pirenne states that the diffusion of spices from the Orient was uninterrupted after the invasions.Instead of declining, the author posits that the Germanic invasions may have revived the prosperity of the slave trade. The Germanic peoples would have been familiar with the slave trade, brought slaves with them, and their wars must have added to their numbers. 

Leaving no room for error, Pirenne emphasizes that imports and exports were extensive in the sixth century.Had there been a fall of civilization, then surely trade would have been the first to noticeably deteriorate. Most importantly to Pirenne, the invasions did not supplant the Empire with a Germanic coin. “Nothing attests more clearly the persistence of the economic unity of the Empire. It was impossible to deprive it of the benefit of monetary unit”. 

In consideration of art, Pirenne states that there was no artistic interruption in the Mediterranean. The Germanic vein of Visigothic art was extinguished by the sixth century. Poets continued to write poetry. Coyly, Pirenne points out that someone had to be reading the poetry that was created. Overall, Piernne deftly reconstructs the economic, social, and cultural practices “Romania” after the invasions, and demonstrates that although the invaders were considerably different, the Germans almost seamlessly assimilated into their new environment and empire. Not a fall or decline of the Empire, but business and life carried on as usual. 

According to Pirenne, the Middle Ages began after the eighth century. “Before the 8^th century what existed was the continuation of the ancient Mediterranean economy. After the 8^thcentury there was a complete break with this economy. The sea was closed. Commerce had disappeared”.Pirenne differs in this respect to previous historians in that prior to Pirenne, the Middle Ages started much sooner. Specifically, Pirenne points to the reign of Charlemagne as the beginning of the Middle Ages. “The Carolingian Empire, or rather, the Empire of Charlemagne, was the scaffolding of the Middle Ages”. As Pirenne pointed to the circulation of money as an indicator that civilization was not dead in the sixth century, he does the opposite in the eighth. “As for the currency, this was in a terrible state of confusion. There was practically no gold in circulation.” Prices were frequently paid in grain or cattle. Navigation degenerated. Pirates infested the waters of the Mediterranean. The class of wealthy merchants had vanished. Aside from a very few, the only group of people to manage trade were the Jews.Pirenne concludes that the degeneration of commerce “resulted in making the soil more than ever the essential basis of economic life”. 

For the most part, McCormick agrees with Pirenne, his thesis, and surrounding details. Agreeably, McCormick also denotes the Middle Ages as beginning around the eighth century after the spread of Islam, not the invasions of the Barbarians in the fifth century. McCormick points out how Pirenne easily denotes papyrus missing from the scribes in Gaul during the seventh century. Even more impressed, McCormick gives Pirenne credit with grasping the next obvious conclusion: the disruption of trade with the Orient because the Islamic world had taken control of the Mediterranean. 

McCormick offers several important additions involving communication to think about regarding Pirenne’s thesis. First, McCormick speculates the reason merchants, and specifically merchants mentioned by name, disappear from record books during the seventh century is not because there simply were no merchants, but because the chroniclers would not have deigned to waste their time recording such information.  However, McCormick points out that just because merchants are quiet in the record books does not mean they did not exist. He counters that what we are left with is communications. Using the movements of people, coinage, goods, and slaves, McCormick deftly adds another element to Pirenne’s thesis. 

Without a bibliography, deciphering Pirenne’s sources is a bit daunting. One of Pirenne’s favorite sources was Gregory of Tours, who was a contemporary Bishop who recorded a history of the Franks, and recorded observations during his time period. Gregory of Tours seems to be an invaluable source to Pirenne. According to the Preface, Henri Pirenne’s son, Jacques Pirenne, completed Mohammed and Charlemagne after the death of Henri. Basing the completed version ofMohammed and Charlemagne on a “rough draft” completed by Henri Pirenne, Jacques Pirenne and a valued pupil of Henri Pirenne’s, M. F. Vercauteren, cited sources. This double-dip of note-taking and referencing no doubt left several assertions incomplete. Nonetheless, Jacques Pirenne is correct when he asserts that Mohammed and Charlemagne contain the “most vital, boldest, and most recent ideas” of the conditions leading up to the fall of the Roman Empire and the spread of Islam in the early Middle Ages. 

Walter Hopson

birth: November 6, 1901

location: Henderson County, Texas

death: July 1, 1997

location:

Father: William H. Hopson
Mother: Julie Pearl Davis Hopson McKay

spouse: Ione Perry

birth

1910 census

1940 census

burial

children with Ione Perry:

Melvin Hopson - 1925

Connaly Hopson - 1928

Doyle Reese Hopson - 1930

Fayrene Hopson - 1932

Patsy Ann Hopson - 1938

Wanda Jean Hopson - 1939

Cletus Hopson - 1942

Linda Joyce Hopso - 1944

Edna Fay Hopson - 1946

Annie Jack Hopson - 1948

Jo Nell Hopson - 1950

Walter Hopson - 1940 census

1940 census
location: Henderson County, Texas
date: May 6-7, 1940

Walter H Hopson  head  male  white  36  married  Texas  farmer
Ione Hopson  wife  female  white  32  married  Texas
Melvin Hopson  son  male  white  14  single  Texas
Conley Hopson  son  male  white  13  single  Texas
D Reese Hopson  son  male  white  10  single  Texas
Fayrene Hopson  daughter  female  white  8  single  Texas
Jenette  Hopson  daughter  female  white  5  single  Texas
Wanda J Hopson  daughter  female  white  4/12  single  Texas

"United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K4Q7-CP9 : accessed 13 July 2015), Ione Hopson in household of Walter H Hopson, Edom, Justice Precinct 5, Van Zandt, Texas, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 234-21, sheet 14A, family 276, NARA digital publication T627 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012), roll 4155.

Walter Hopson - birth

location: Henderson County, Texas
birth: November 6, 1901

"Texas, Births and Christenings, 1840-1981," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F6G2-751 : accessed 13 July 2015), Walter Hopson, 06 Nov 1901; citing Henderson, Texas, reference ; FHL microfilm 1,481,004.

Henry Hopson and Essie Lee Brand - marriage

date: March 20, 1926
location: Henderson County, Texas

"Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F61L-1WB : accessed 13 July 2015), Henry Hopson and Essie Broud Or Brand, 20 Mar 1926; citing Henderson Co., Texas, , reference bk11 p373; FHL microfilm 1,481,022.

Henry Hopson - 1930 census

1930 census
location: Henderson County, Texas
date: Arpil 11, 1930

Henry Hopson  head  male  white  25  married  Texas  farmer
Essie L Hopson  wife  female  white  20  married  Texas
Howard  Hopson  son  male  white  3  single  Texas
Claudine  Hopson  daughter  female  white  1  single  Texas

"United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:CM9N-86Z : accessed 13 July 2015), Henry Hopson, Precinct 5, Henderson, Texas, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 0019, sheet 6B, family 111, line 51, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 2355; FHL microfilm 2,342,089.

Henry Hopson - birth certificate

date: April 30, 1904
location: Leagueville, Henderson County, Texas

"Texas, Births and Christenings, 1840-1981," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F6G2-Q78 : accessed 13 July 2015), Henry Hopson, 30 Apr 1904; citing Henderson, Texas, reference ; FHL microfilm 1,481,004.

Henry Hopson

birth: April 30, 1904

location: Henderson County, Texas

death: March 31, 1982

location:

Father: William H. Hopson
Mother: Julie Pearl Davis Hopson McKay

spouse: Essie Lee Brand

birth

1910 census

marriage to Essie Lee Brand

1930 census

burial

children with Essie Lee Brand:

1. Howard Hopson - 1926

2. Claudine Hopson - 1929

3. Iva Nell Hopson - 1933

4. Norma Gean Hopson - 1936

5. Delores Hopson - 1938

6. Melba Hopson - 1945

7. Dian Hopson - 1949

History 5394: Early Modern Europe

1. "Dare to Know" - an essay over several readings

Dare to Know

“Dare to Know”

            The medieval man considered religion above all else, with life composed and ordered by God. His duty was to accept the Word, live accordingly, and reach salvation. As the seventeenth century matured, man’s ideas and theories began to mature and change. Certain men, “philosophes,” began to confront the medieval man’s way of thinking. Instead of relying on societal tradition, philosophes such as Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Denis Diderot, and Immanuel Kant challenged their contemporaries to use reason in their individual lives and religion to go beyond what had normally been accepted as fact. This Age of Enlightenment lasted throughout the eighteenth-century, but the facts of and the debate about this monumental shift in public thought continues to be studied today. 

Many modern historians claim different interpretations of the Enlightenment, its actors, and its components. Writing from the perspective of the twentieth-century, Carl L. Becker ably describes the intellectual scene leading up to the Enlightenment in his book, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. “Intelligence was essential, since God had endowed men with it. But the function of intelligence was strictly limited.” Man did not question his origin or what would happen upon his death. Intelligence was needed to demonstrate the truth of revealed knowledge.[1]

Becker importantly asserts that the philosophes of the Enlightenment relied upon Christian assumptions. “The philosophes were nearer the Middle Ages, less emancipated from the preconceptions of medieval Christian thought, than they quite realized or we have commonly supposed.”[2] Becker also goes on to argue that before the seventeenth century, there existed a rational climate of opinion, but the Age of Enlightenment brought with it a factual climate of opinion. Becker’s title points to two things: the medieval man’s engrained notions of Heaven and the salvation needed to get there, and eighteenth-century thought patterns that helped to enlighten Europeans, who would reconstruct a Heavenly City of different materials.

Paul Hazard, in his The European Mind, builds upon Becker to provide a brief social and cultural historical foundation of Europe leading up to the Enlightenment. This generally influential history looks into the rise of the modern European mind, as the title points to. Detailing the past and providing for the future, Hazard describes the ways in which new thoughts on science, art, and philosophy began to undermine the classical world. Tradition gave way to reason.  

Beginning with travel and travel literature, Hazard contends that “minds and consciences were deeply stirred by” the startling inflow of new ideas as the Enlightenment dawned.[3] Next, “the Moderns” arrived on the scene and with archeological backing changed cultural awareness and opened up religion. Hazard concludes with England assuming the lead in Enlightenment from the French.

Peter Gay, describes what he calls “modern paganism” in his first volume on the Enlightenment, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. Gay’s paganism is not synonymous with the standard definition of pagan: heathen, infidel, and idolater. He calls paganism instead, “the affinity of the Enlightenment to classical thought.”[4] Gay describes seventeenth-century Europe as living in an enlightened atmosphere and citizens as half-prepared to listen. His enlightenment is a cultural style and an invasion of theology by rationalism. He charges that religion was on the defensive throughout the Age of Enlightenment, due in part to the decay of clerical morale, the estrangement of tradition, and the widespread loss of religious fervor. Gay takes a narrower stance on the time frame of the Enlightenment by including only the years 1689-1789. This limited stance leaves out philosophers such as Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, while including those such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon.

As a modern-day historian, Jonathan Israel offers a fresh perspective on the Enlightenment in Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity. He argues that society can only remain stable while details of that particular society direct enough societal popularity and acceptance to maintain a majority. What Israel is alluding to in his thesis, is the breakdown of tradition leading up to the Age of Enlightenment. He points to an erosion of “trust in and acceptance of social hierarchy and kings, bishops, and aristocracy” that began to invade general thought. Following this erosion of tradition, the advent of republican and democratic political ideologies rose to prominence.[5]

Along the same lines of Peter Gay, Israel defends a single century as the time-frame of the Enlightenment. “In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as earlier, long-accepted and deep-rooted criteria legal, dynastic, and theological fixed the measure of just and unjust, legitimate and illegitimate, and of what reforms could rightfully be implemented.” Israel claims that this means that no real revolution could have taken place during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[6] One glaring difference with Gay is Israel’s claim that there were two enlightenments and not one as Gay asserts. Israel breaks Enlightenment down into a radical enlightenment and the more popular, conservative or moderate mainstream enlightenment.

            Immanuel Kant wrote his piece, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” as the Age of Enlightenment was coming to an end. He offers a mature, developed, and contemporary view about what some enlighteners understood about what they were doing and what they had accomplished. Kant begins with the immaturity and laziness of man. In words that ring true even today, Kant describes man’s reluctance to do for himself what he can pay for others to do. In democratic language, Kant argues that in order for society to be enlightened, it only needs freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters. He underscores this freedom with the assertion that affairs which would affect the interests of all need a certain mechanism to control misuse. Kant describes the freedom of society, beginning with officials of the law, citizens, scholars, and clerics.

            Kant’s awareness of Enlightenment is striking in his statement, “If it is now asked whether we at present live in an enlightened age, the answer is: No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.”[7] Kant realized that Enlightenment was more than a passing fad or a generational trend. He was essentially giving Enlightenment freedom to continue. Kant also argued for a controlled degree of civil freedom so that intellectual freedom would be free to expand to its fullest extent.

            Enabled by the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment became the near exact opposite of the Middle Ages. Enlightenment took many by surprise as the Middle Ages were marked by unwavering religious devotion. This revolutionary time period in European history cleared the path for individualistic thought and brought an increase in self-awareness.

1.     Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), pp. 1-31.

2.     Paul Hazard, The European Mind [1680-1715] (orig. 1935), pp. xv-xx, 3-79.

3.     Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism (1996), pp. 3-27, 322-57.

4.     Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of modernity 1650-1750 (2001), pp. 3-22.

5.     Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784).

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[1] Becker, page 9.

[2] Becker, page 29.

[3] Hazard, page 9.

[4] Gay, page 9.

[5] Israel, pages 9-10.

[6] Israel, page 4.

[7] Kant. 

Book Review: A Stone of Hope

David L. Chappell. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

          In A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, David L. Chappell sheds new light on the components of the civil rights movement, concretely adding prophetic religion to the mix of ingredients of those tumultuous times from 1940s-1960s. Chappell’s thesis states “that faith drove black southern protesters to their extraordinary victories in the mid-1960s, grew out of a realistic understanding of the typically dim prospects for social justice in the world.” The protester’s prophetic content of their speeches, diaries, and other paraphernalia related to the civil rights movement, illuminates this great divide. With an eye for detail, Chappell points to the factors of religion that have been overlooked by other historians as our country ended Jim Crow and segregation.

          One of Chappell’s interesting beliefs was that the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow and segregation took place at a weak point in white solidarity. He claims that Southern blacks did not have the same number of supporters as segregationists, but “that white racism could not withstand the strength of the cultural resources that some black protesters brought to bear on the struggle.” In short, antiracists and black protesters had a greater understanding of human nature that helps explain their defeat of segregationists.

          To acknowledge all of the leading protesters and their theories on racism, liberalism, and the like would take more space than Chappell could probably afford. Instead, he highlights several of the most well-known and “ordinary” leaders of the civil rights movement, and details their theories and philosophies. Of the more interesting to read about were Bob Moses with his prophetic brand of skepticism about human progress, the outspoken preacher Fannie Lou Hamer who felt that the civil rights battle was an inherently spiritual struggle for black Americans and held on to the adage that the most segregated hour in America was ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Fred Shuttlesworth, a charismatic leader who believed that the movement was “a religious crusade, a fight between light and darkness, right and wrong, good and evil, fair play and tyranny.” Bringing to life these types of characters in such a defining moment of American history, and not just relying on the most well-known such as Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pulls into focus the point that the civil rights movement was a movement led by ordinary people faced with extraordinary racial and religious obstacles.

          Bringing religion into the picture, Chappell compares the civil rights movement to a historic revival. The civil rights movement “shifted the focus of church doctrine away from eternal salvation and toward attaining justice in this life.” The enthusiasm of the movement moved into the streets, and if it did not directly influence every listener, Chappell claims that the message reached them nonetheless, whether or not they accepted. The church was the perfect breeding ground for the movement to take place. Weekly meetings, racially divided, large groups, prophetic messages, nowhere else would large numbers of Southern blacks be gathered together and easier to organize than the church house.

          Of books related to the civil rights movement, most overwhelmingly center on desegregation and it’s defendants. Chappell does something interesting by highlighting segregationists and their thinking, the evil in a good versus evil battle. Part of his claim is that the white South did not put up much of a fight. He spends an entire chapter trying to explain this seemingly incomprehensible phenomenon. Fear was a driving force behind white southerner’s relationships with each other. The minds of the segregationist faction feared what the “white bigots and demagogues” would do and react. According to Chappell, this division in effect, lost the segregationist battle of the civil rights movement. “Fortunately for the black protesters, they were not united.”

          Chappell deserves a ton of credit for completing A Stone of Hope, especially given the subject matter: prophetic religion. In his conclusion, Chappell admits, “First approaching this story as an atheist, I was surprised and skeptical to hear so many of my subjects – whom I admired from afar – expressing what Bayard Rustin called “fundamentalist” views.” Chappell goes on to describe his reluctance to believe his subject’s testimony of “miracles” had it not been for their frequency and key to the beliefs of his subject’s choices. In a catch-22 situation, perhaps only an atheist could tell this story with an objective mind, but perhaps a religious mind could have given more clarity to certain aspects.

          Clearly a well-researched book, A Stone of Hope is nevertheless not an easily understandable book by someone who is not somewhat familiar or the least bit interested in the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Chappell obviously has a great handle on the material but seems to have trouble getting that material to the reader in a fashion that is interesting and relatable. It is more a book of general theories than facts, which is more difficult to understand.

As compared to W. J. Cash’s book, The Mind of the South, A Stone of Hope picks up Cash’s story long after The Mind of the South was published. Cash lays a foundation of the general racial attitudes of the South before the civil rights movement gained steam. Cash’s generalizations about African-Americans are just as offensive in the twenty-first century as they would have been in the middle of the twentieth when black protesters marched on Birmingham. Cash would have scarcely believed the desegregated America that emerged as a result of the civil rights movement. Chappell clarifies this movement and gives black Americans a legacy to be proud of. He very clearly shows that the protesters of the civil rights movement were not deaf and dumb to their plight. Their hope of equality set them apart from Cash’s typical African-American.

          

Book Review: American Slavery, American Freedom

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.

          One of the great questions Americans could ask of history is: How could a nation be founded upon freedom and liberty but enslave twenty percent of its citizens? Edmund S. Morgan attempts to answer this question in American Slavery, American Freedom. This is a magnificently researched book that sets out to cut to the root of this great topic, slavery and freedom. His thesis, how freedom came to be supported by slavery, a relationship of exact opposites, is one that many Americans continue to have trouble accepting. Morgan asserts that the answers to this hypocritical situation lie in Virginia since that state was the most influential and most populated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

          To begin, Morgan addresses the hypocrisy of our Founding Father’s separation from England because of tax enslavement. While white Virginians attempted to wrest control of the fledgling American government from England, those same wealthy plantation owners had no problems enslaving an entire race of people. There may be no exact answer, but Morgan places himself and Virginia in the best position to account for the hypocrisy. Morgan centers his research on Virginia and his reasons are clear and important: “Virginia was the largest of the new United States, in territory, in population, in influence – and in slaveholding.” Tobacco, the crop that Morgan claims helped buy American independence, was grown in great quantities in Virginia by Virginian slaves. Plus, many of the Founding Fathers were from Virginia. Many of our country’s great documents were written by Virginians. Morgan’s point is that Virginia was the center of early American economics and politics. Without Virginia, it would be hard to answer the paradoxical question of the simultaneous growth of slavery and freedom. American Slavery, American Freedom is also the story of Virginian Slavery, Virginian Freedom.

Detouring slightly from his proclaimed thesis, Morgan has a fascinating chapter on the lost colony of Roanoke Island. What happened to the colonists on Roanoke Island remains a great mystery in the history of the colonization of the New World. While Morgan has no new theories as to where the colonists disappeared to, his storytelling and research is hard to discredit. To be sure, Morgan has an interesting topic to being with, but “The Lost Colony” is made all the more better by his writing and attention to detail.

The tale of slavery and freedom cannot be told without mentioning tobacco. Morgan ably describes how the weed saved the new colony of Virginia and gave rise to servitude and eventually led to racial slavery. The first colonists who planted tobacco exported their crop to England. As this practice became more and more profitable, the crop became the only thing Virginians wanted to plant. Even after the English government tried to control and limit the planting of tobacco to raise the price, wealthy Virginians continued to export the plant. However, these Virginians could not farm tobacco alone. Labor was required.

Initially, Morgan attests that forms of indentured servitude furnished the necessary labor to farm tobacco. Englishmen were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and would enter into servitude for a period of time as payment for their passage to the New World. Morgan goes into great detail chronicling the ins and outs of this early servitude, including the trade-off of transportation versus the amount of time to be served, punishments allocated to servants, and the high mortality rate of those servants. This information is just fascinating and Morgan’s dedication to the subject is appreciated.  

Morgan points out that over time the impressed servitude of English servants gave way to outright racial slavery. Although it is hard to pinpoint a moment in time that racial slavery took hold, Morgan seems certain that the switch happened on Virginian tobacco plantations. Admittedly, Morgan has a little trouble stating exactly why Virginians began enslaving imported African slaves and why this practice accelerated. He points out that it made better economic sense to buy servants rather than slaves. Granted, slave owners would own slaves for a lifetime, that lifetime would be statistically short in early Virginian society. On the other hand, a servant would serve a master for a period of years and then be freed. The plantation owners were faced with paying a high price for a slave who probably would not live for an extended amount of time, or pay a price for a servant during their peak working years.

Finally making his way to his thesis, Morgan begins to specifically address the relationship between slavery and freedom. For the reasons behind the seemingly simultaneous growth of slavery and freedom, he points to a slave force who had become isolated by race and racism, a large group of wealthy, politically minded planters who were extremely loyal to Virginia, and an even larger group of poorer farmers who had become convinced that their interests would be best served by those wealthy plantation barons. Plantations needed labor to grow their tobacco and other crops. African-American slaves proved to be the solution to the labor question. The wealthy Virginians wanted to control the economics of Virginian society. Poor whites realized that it would be better to have relative liberty and go along with the wealthy plantation owners than to be the blood, sweat, and tears behind the wealthy plantation labor. These three components, mixed with the rise of republican ideas, allowed American slavery and American freedom to prosper side by side.

One of W.J. Cash’s main theories was the continuity of American history. He claimed that there were no definite breaks in American history. Morgan’s impeccably research American Slavery, American Freedom pinpoints the changes in how wealthy Virginians obtained their labor. What began as impressed servitude of Englishmen developed into full-blown racial slavery in about one hundred years. If one compares the two forms of servitude at their respective heights, the differences are blatant. It could be argued that as racial slavery developed from English servitude, the differences were a little more subtle, however, given the standpoint of time, there is no continuity of the history of American enslavement practices.

American Slavery, American Freedom is more valuable for the minutely researched information on early Virginian society than for the conclusions drawn. Morgan provides a comprehensive look at the driving forces of Virginian economics and society. Students of Southern history or Virginian history should make time for this informative book. 

Book Review: The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. A Commemorative Edition with a new afterward by William S. McFeely. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

From the distance of sixty years since its original publication, The Strange Career of Jim Crow may not ignite reader’s passions as it did on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen fifties. But with the hindsight that history offers, The Strange Career of Jim Crow continues to be, as Martin Luther King, Jr. described, “The Historical Bible of the Civil Rights Movement.” C. Vann Woodward forever solidified his importance in Southern History with his groundbreaking essays on Reconstruction, race, and the Jim Crow South.

History is not always transparent or easy to interpret. The decades following the Civil War are sometimes characterized as harmonious and without conflict. Woodward turned that perspective on its head with The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His thesis runs that Jim Crow laws and segregation did not occur until after the Civil War, with Reconstruction well on its way. Instead, he argues that white racial superiority manifested itself at the very beginning of the twentieth century in the form of Jim Crow laws and segregation. Jim Crow was not an inevitable outcome of the Civil War or Reconstruction. Those laws were a choice made by white Americans, Northern and Southern.

The majority of the first part of The Strange Career of Jim Crow is a much-needed history lesson on racial circumstances from the Civil War onward. Woodward asserts that segregation stemmed from slavery. Although most slaves worked in the presence of their slave owners, a large amount other daily activities took place away from the whites. Slave’s sleeping, bathing, eating, and other daily activities took place away from the whites whom they served. Despite this seclusion, there was little other segregation. Black slaves, especially house servants, were constantly in the presence of whites. Woodward also mentions the fact of slave health in relation to the nearness of whites. It was in the best interest of the slave owner to maintain their slave’s health. Slave owners would have tended to wounds and otherwise been in close proximity with their property for mere financial reasons.

In what is considered a historical revelation, Woodward suggests that Jim Crow and segregation weren’t inevitable aftershocks of the Civil War or Reconstruction, but were instead part of a bigger political picture. The South did not go from Civil War to racial segregation over night. While it took nearly one hundred years for blacks to be recognized as full citizens, many held prominent positions in society. Woodward lists name after name and number after number of black men to hold respected societal positions up to the turn of the century, including members of state senates and postmasters. Next, the author points to the relationships blacks and whites held in day-to-day life. In certain areas, blacks and whites shared train rides. They shared restaurants. They shared barbers. They shared churches and religion. Woodward is quick to point out that Jim Crow laws regarding transportation began in the North, not in the South where they would eventually flourish. However, far from blaming the North for Jim Crow laws, Woodward goes on to explain how the laws and segregation permeated the South. He points to a fateful mix of Southern politics, white supremacy and economics as the factors that ultimately led to the South’s divided public.

Despite the doom and gloom the South created for itself, Woodward also hopefully maintained that if Jim Crow and segregation could come to be accepted, then desegregation and the Civil Rights movement could change what had previously been wrought. It is this hopeful endearment that makes The Strange Career of Jim Crow such a timeless piece. In the face of all of the hate, all of the negativity, C. Vann Woodward is able to live during these tumultuous times and still have hope for a better South.

The distance between W. J. Cash and C. Vann Woodward as writers rings loud and clear (not to be confused with Cash’s “gallop of Jeb Stuart’s cavalrymen”). Cash writes The Mind of the South as a great Southern fiction novel, while Woodward in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is clearly an academic writing for the general public. When comparing the two books, it is again evident how Cash pays little to no attention to the blacks. On the other hand, Woodward focuses on the plight of the black man and the challenges he faced.

Most significantly, Cash’s broad thesis surrounds his theory of continuity: a continual link between the Old South and the New South. Woodward begins The Strange Career of Jim Crow by comparing American history to that of a stream flowing through the centuries. The stream flowed down from the seventeenth century, reaching a level plain in the eighteenth century. Woodward points out that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Southern history took a different path, plunging over falls or swirling through rapids. “The breaks in the course of Southern history go by the names of slavery and secession, independence and defeat, emancipation and reconstruction, redemption and reunion.” Without question Southern history took a different course, not only prior to the Civil War, but in the years known as Reconstruction. Clearly, Cash saw a continuity where Woodward did not.

And finally, Cash is never able to cut to the heart of the black experience as Woodward does. Mostly given to criticizing the black man for his laziness, Cash rarely mentions blacks and never does he champion their burgeoning civil rights cause. However, Woodward is able to see the black man’s point of view in regard to slavery, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is itself an advocate for Civil Rights. Perhaps, given the chance of a longer life, W. J. Cash could have had a chance to remedy some of his interpretations of history.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow details the life of one of America’s biggest embarrassment in terms of legislation. Woodward has completely mastered the pen and builds steam as the Civil Rights Movements crests. Generations of Americans have turned to The Strange Career of Jim Crow to learn about our shared history. This relatively short book still has much to teach Americans and will continue to teach even over the distance of time. 

Book Review: The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash

Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. With a new introduction by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.          New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

The year 1941 saw a landmark book published, The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash. Cash determined to delve into the true mindset of the South. His thesis contends that the South was divided into three minds, or “frontiers:” pre-Civil War, where the white planter class dominated all aspects of society, with little regard to Native Americans, African-Americans, or women; the Reconstruction era, where African-Americans were still not really free and elite whites continued to dominate society; and the beginning of the twentieth century where the old social order of the South charged on, with Confederate soldiers and elite whites assuming the lead roles in all parts of society, thus laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement. This is a shocking and almost comical book for modern readers, but remains a landmark book in early-twentieth century Southern scholarship.

From his first few lines, Cash assumes his readers are just like him: white, male, and above all else, Southern. In the introduction by Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Cash’s writing is compared to a country attorney addressing a jury of other like-minded Southern white men. The Mind of the South is a first-rate example of traditionalist historical writing. The only point-of-view defended is that of the elite Southern white man. Women are ignored except to criticize their behaviors. African-Americans are mentioned, but just as members of the lowest social order throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early twentieth century. True to the traditionalist stand-point, the Southern white man is glorified and exemplified. Given today’s distance from the time of his writing and the progression of Southern historiography, these points are easy to observe. Thankfully, we do not have to rely on Cash’s work as the final say as the true “Mind of the South.”

          Of his three frontiers, the first section of Cash’s Mind of the South, the pre-Civil War frontier, is most interesting to read. Much time is spent defending the white planter class against a descent from English aristocracy. Cash claims that most nineteenth century planters had instead started as poor whites who were somehow able to tame the wilderness and rise to prominence in early American history (pg. 7). When not defending elite whites, Cash can be counted on to excoriate poor whites. His categorizations are not only wrong, but offensive. Not every poor white man would do nothing but sit under a shade tree getting drunk (pg. 24). He considers the poor whites to be less cunning and less lucky than their counterparts. Cash seems to create a separate species when he writes about poor whites.  

          Another important aspect of the mind of Cash’s South, is the paternalism he describes elite whites as having over the poor whites. To begin, Cash’s elite Southern white man is distantly related to everyone in a thirty mile radius (pg. 26). This situational-connectedness allowed the elite man to socially preside over the poor white man. With Southern romanticism, Cash asserts that the elite white man would tend to and care for the poor white man in times of extreme need. Planting advice was given as needed to the poor man, resources were shared; a weird paternalism existed. Cash also touches on the inevitable haughtiness that would come from the elite whites. If the poor whites received scorn from the elite planter class of white men, the scorn was unnoticeable (pg. 41). Cash basically defends Cotton Snobs for their snobbery. Cash’s interpretation of this time period is reminiscent of the Margaret Mitchell’s historical novel, Gone With the Wind.

          In his second section, Cash addresses the Civil War and Reconstruction-eras as a mindset of the South. No less shocking in his generalizations and stereotypes, Cash charges on with his ideals. The Old South is depicted as a society overwhelmed by the aspect of defeat, shame, and guilt. Southerners were no longer in control of their government, and in their secret heart, Cash asserts that guilt was expressed over slavery (pg. 61).

Additionally, as a Southerner himself, Cash defends the “Lost Cause” mindset. African-Americans are depicted as pleasure-seeking rapers of white women. (What about the rape of black women?) Cash admits that the initial emergence of white violence towards former slaves was because of the defense of the white woman and the ease of which blacks were the scapegoat (pg. 117). 

          Another interesting aspect Cash uses to defend the “Lost Cause” mindset of the South, is his claim that the planter class died out and gave way to a gentlemen’s class, mostly made up of former Confederate soldiers (pg. 121). It is true that Confederate soldiers were revered in the South during the Reconstruction years and even afterward, most Confederate soldiers were themselves poor farmers, hardly wealthy landowners on the whole.

          Finally, Cash’s third frontier is what he claims to be the quiet years as the twentieth century dawned. Cash contends that the poor white farmers of the nineteenth century remained at the bottom of the social order as the lowly factory workers. The wealthy planter class morphed into the factory owners. Instead of large plantations, the elite white men were building columned homes, buying large cars, and their wives were joining country clubs, the D.A.R. and the U.D.C (pg. 239-240). Blacks remained at the very bottom of the social strata much as they had before, during, and after the Civil War.

It takes little effort to discover the W.J. Cash committed suicide shortly after publication of The Mind of the South. This fact begs the question: What part does his mental illness and physical disabilities play into his generalizations, stereotypes, and prejudices in his mind of the south? Cash was recorded as experiencing manic episodes, melancholia, and alcoholism (xxviii). Had he lived longer after the publication of The Mind of the South, Cash could have had time to heavily revise some of his key points.

Lucky for Cash, he is a good writer. When not being overly-romantic, his words are beautiful. However, this cannot take away from the fact that over one hundred year’s time has gone by and almost all of his conclusions have proven to be false. Perhaps Wyatt-Brown said it best of The Mind of the South: “It has its own special voice through which it articulates the author’s singular perception of the South.” (vii) Singular and one-dimensional, indeed.

History 5374 - Seminar in the History of the American South

1. Book Review: The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash

2. Book Review: James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, by Drew Gilpin Faust

3. Book Review: A Stone of Hope Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell

4. Book Review: The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

5. Book Review: American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan