Eugene Genovese. A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. xvi + 180 pp. $24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8203-2046-5.
Reviewed by Randy Finley
Published on H-CivWar (October, 1999)
Eugene Genovese is one of the foremost twen‐ gious conversion and education of slaves and the tieth-century American historians. Both scholars legitimization of the slave family. Ministers such and schoolchildren fashion their understandings as the Reverend H. N. McTyeire, a "rising star" in of antebellum southern slavery, whether they South Carolina Methodism, wrestled with Exodus know it or not, from his seminal Roll, Jordan, Roll: 2: 26-27 which warned masters that abused slaves The World The Slaves Made. In over thirty other would be freed if injustices persisted. Genovese books, Genovese has dissected the South and its cites leading divines and planters who were penetration by the global economy. On or about deeply vexed about the inequities and iniquities 1995, Professor Genovese converted and ex‐ inherent in their peculiar institution. Many changed Marxism for Catholicism. His subsequent prayed for a resolution of the confict, so long as it writings, often jeremiads, refect this volte face. was a "manly resolution. And they did go down in A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy fre and blood" (p. 33). in the Mind of the White Christian South is Gen‐ The actual war proved most problematical for ovese's most recent meditation on the demise of southern preachers. A few ministers exulted as the rebelling South. Delivered in the Mercer Uni‐ the South won the frst major battles; but even versity Lamar Memorial Lecture series, this im‐ then, many ecclesiastics tempered bellicosity and portant work joins others by various scholars of urged caution. Increasing battlefeld losses and southern history who have participated in the se‐ home-front miseries prompted a deepening crisis ries. In this work, Genovese contends that of faith and a call for a reformation of slavery by "thoughtful southerners writhed over the gap be‐ religious leaders. Some even countenanced free‐ tween the realities of slavery and an ideal system ing slaves who fought for the Confederacy. As the of servitude they considered biblically sanc‐ war ended, southern Christians "struggled to read tioned" (p. 107). Their anxiety obsessed on fes‐ aright the signs of the times" and "could hardly es‐ tered scabs of the antebellum regime: the reli‐ cape the thought that, once again, a wrathful and H-Net Reviews inscrutable God had called upon the heathen to slippery descent into modernity and theological punish his disobedient people" (p. 71). liberalism more complex than being primarily Defeat. A word unknown to nineteenth-centu‐ caused by the orthodox minister's acquiescence ry Americans, especially northern secular human‐ after the despair of defeat? ists or scientifc racists, but a reality ground deep For those of us who hum REM'S "Losing My into the marrow of most southerners after Appo‐ Religion" a little too gleefully, it is impossible to mattox. Genovese argues that southern race rela‐ demarcate "orthodoxy" with the precision and tions plummeted in the 1890s, as exemplifed by certainty of Genovese. Just how does he speak so Jim Crow laws and brutal lynchings which lasted surely for "the Lord"? Historically, we are on safer until World War II because southern preachers ground when we accuse the author of imposing capitulated to the market capitalists, scientifc himself--his thoughts and his arguments--into the racists, and theological liberals. He believes that nineteenth or early twentieth century. The author, southern religious leaders abandoned their like all good Biblical exegesists, counters scrip‐ staunch defense of orthodoxy after the Civil War tural debates from the nineteenth century debate and accepted, heels dragging, segregation and with his own twentieth-century rejoinders. At var‐ ideas of black inferiority. "We may well fnd," he ious times, the author injects Deuteronomy 1:17 contends, "that the retreat of the postbellum (p. 30) or Exodus 21:26-27 (p. 132) to support his southern divines into that liberalism was organi‐ contentions. In opposing the scientifc racists of cally related to their retreat from a coherent so‐ the postbellum North and South, Genovese insists cial theory and worldview" (p. 94). Unlike their "that any such vision could be reconciled with the previous dedication to amelioration of chattel Bible must be judged, to say the least, doubtful, slavery, they despaired of confronting Jim Crow. and subsequent generations of imperialists who Instead of swaying public opinion, as they had tried scripturally to justify their course plunged nobly attempted before the Civil War; they cow‐ into rank bad faith" (p. 91). Just what is rank bad ered and followed in the postwar era, which Gen‐ faith? Genovese also creates a fantasy reader who ovese describes as "one of the many joys of the de‐ must have known, from his reading of Gibbon, mocratization of the church" (p. 95). Even though that Muslims were prohibited from separating he insists that such behavior was inevitable be‐ slave children from their mothers (p. 21). Ironical‐ cause of the irresistible attraction of capitalism ly for such a conservative historian, authorial in‐ and the ensuing bourgeois social order; he chas‐ trusions put him in the stylistic camp of postmod‐ tises the church for silence and capitulation. "Not ernists. a mumbling word" was uttered by southern di‐ Genovese's divines had a superior vision, he vines. The consuming apocalypse of Civil War had believes, to the fawed and degrading chattel slav‐ devoured more than just chattel slavery, it had si‐ ery of the antebellum world, to the fawed and de‐ lenced the prophetic voice of orthodox Christians. grading sharecropping and wage- earning slaves As with any such slim volume, Genovese of the Gilded Age, and to the fawed and degrad‐ spurs us to study the subject further. How infuen‐ ing consumption-slave of the post-modern world. tial and numerous were these antebellum Whether this is historically accurate is debatable; prelates, admired so by the author, who called for but what seems most laudatory about Genovese is Christian reform of southern slavery? Did they re‐ his attempt to try to see the white antebellum ally infuence that many southern planters or South in all its complexity and richness and to white yeomenry? Does the author exaggerate reafrm the importance of religion in the region their impact and importance? Isn't the South's during the nineteenth century.
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In matters of the heart and of the bended knee, Eugene Genovese has decided he is not re‐ sponsible to his guild, but to his God. His footsteps are, for many, inaccessible. But his passion, analy‐ sis, and integrity are, still, exemplary. The next time you despair, which will most likely be the next time you read the newspaper, take solace that Eugene Genovese most likely has three or four good books left to write before he takes leave for that which he has so long yearned: his destina‐ tion, at long last, to the City of God. Such books will be treasured by those of us who know only the City of Man. Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].
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Citation: Randy Finley. Review of Genovese, Eugene. A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews. October, 1999.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3503
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