The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War

This magnificent little book is well titled. It brings us a reintegration of our antebellum history. One of the most impressive artoicles is that dealing with the southern tholog Thornton in which Freehling gives us a clear view of paternalistic religion in defense of slavery. A great read. Highly recommended.

William W. Freehling calls for a new, 'reintegrated' American history, merging social, political and military history, in his fascinating essay collection, which follows the evolution of the Slavocratic South in roughly chronological order: the second essay deals with the Founding Fathers' attitudes towards slavery, while the later ones map Southern history to Appomattox. The main thread through Freehling's essays is the conflict he sees between two incompatible Southern ideologies: Paternalism - the view that a Southern Slavocracy has to guide not only black slaves and white women, but also 'lesser' white men; and what he calls Herrenvolkism, or white supremacy - the notion, associated with Andrew Jackson, that America is the republic of equal white men. Most exciting is Freehling's description of a tendency - one may almost say conspiracy - by Southern Paternalists to undermine the main instrument of the Herrenvolk ideology, the Jacksonian Democratic party, and replace it with a solid, Paternalistic, anti-antislavery South. The prime suspect is Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, who commenced the struggle for the annexation of Texas as a way to awaken Southern consciousness: "There is [a] systematic conspiracy against the South and its institution..." Upshur wrote "[t]he South will be deceived... and will wake up, only to find itself powerless". Upshur saw the danger in "Northern Politicians... ever ready to sacrifice both political and moral principle" (quoted on pp. 126-128). Abel Upshur considered Herrenvolk democracy untrustworthy because not all Southerners had slave property and thus a stake in the system. Instead, they could be deluded by Jacksonian demagogues. (pp. 130-131). The Texas annexation issue was thus, at least partially, a measure against the Democratic Party. Possibly because Freehling's research covers such long periods, he downplays the role of contingencies. In his discussion of the causes of Southern defeat in the Civil War, Freehling criticizes historians such as James McPherson, who believe that the outcome of the Civil War was dependent upon battlefield victories. "[M]ilitary narrators [argue]... military outcomes shaped social outcomes, not vice versa, and military outcomes might easily have been reversed". Freehling convincingly argues that regardless of the outcome of Antietam, British pro Southern Military intervention was unlikely, and that even had George McClellan won the 8164 presidential elections, the war for the Union would have continued (pp. 224-228). Freehling locates social causes for Southern defeat: the defection of upper South whites and of blacks to the North. Here Freehling fails to differentiate between the circumstances of the war and the causes for the defeat. In the 1850s, the sectional conflict was between Southerners and Northerners - but in the 1860s, the American Civil War raged between the eleven states of the Confederacy and the rest of the United States. Did Souther

if you're interested in civil war causation and the ante-bellum south, GET THIS BOOK! i've studied the civil war-era for a while now and every single essay taught me something new. I LOVE THIS FREAKING BOOK! thanks, mr. freehling.