Slavery in White and Black Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders’ New World Order

This page intentionally left blank Slavery in White and Black Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders’ New World Order Southern slaveholders proudly pronounced themselves orthodox Chris- tians, who accepted responsibility for the welfare of the people who worked for them. They proclaimed that their slaves enjoyed a better and more secure life than any laboring class in the world. Now, did it not follow that the lives of laborers of all races across the world would be immea- surably improved by their enslavement? In the Old South, but in no other slave society, a doctrine emerged among leading clergymen, politicians, and intellectuals, “Slavery in the Abstract,” which declared enslavement the best possible condition for all labor regardless of race. They joined the socialists, whom they studied, in believing that the free-labor system, wracked by worsening class warfare, was collapsing. A vital question: To what extent did the people of the several social classes of the South accept so extreme a doctrine? That question lies at the heart of this book. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941–2007) was Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, where she was founding director of Women’s Studies. She served on the Governing Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002–2007). In 2003, President George W. Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal; the Georgia State Senate honored her with a special resolution of appreciation for her contributions as a scholar, teacher, and citizen of Georgia; and the fellowship of Catholic Scholars bestowed on her its Cardinal Wright Award. Among her books and published lectures are The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South,and Feminism without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism. Eugene D. Genovese is a retired professor of history. Among his books are Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made; The Slavehold- ers’ Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820–1860;andA Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. Fox-Genovese and Genovese co-authored Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capital- ism and The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview.In2004 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute pre- sented them jointly with its Gerhard Niemeyer Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. Publication of this book has been aided by the generosity of the Mary C. Skaggs Foundation and the Watson–Brown Foundation, Inc. Slavery in White and Black Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders’ New World Order ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE EUGENE D. GENOVESE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521897006 © Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2008 ISBN-13 978-0-511-43734-2 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-89700-6 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For William J. and Heather Hungeling and Fr. James Sextone That non-slaveholding States will eventually have to organize labour, and introduce something so like to Slavery that it will be impossible to discriminate between them, or else to suffer from the most violent and disastrous insurrections against the system which creates and perpetuates their misery, seems to be as certain as the tendencies in the laws of capital and population to produce the extremes of poverty and wealth. We do not envy them their social condition. —The Reverend Dr. James Henley Thornwell, “Sermon on National Sins” (1860) Contents Preface page ix Manuscript Collections Cited xi List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 1 The Impending Collapse of Capitalism 11 2 Hewers of Wood, Drawers of Water 58 3 Travelers to the South, Southerners Abroad 97 4 The Squaring of Circles 152 5 The Appeal to Social Theory 196 6 Perceptions and Realities 234 Afterword 289 Index 295 vii Preface Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941–2007) and I intended Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders’ New World Order to stand alone, so that readers who do not know our previous work would not be placed at serious disadvantage. Those who have read The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview (2005) will, however, have a richer context for the place of our argument in the trajec- tory of proslavery thought and, more broadly, nineteenth-century transatlantic religious and secular conservative thought. A few clarifications: “The War” refers to the War for Southern Independence of 1861–1865. The term “free labor” is not as straightforward as it might appear; different scholars use it differently. Here, we equate it with “wage labor” as usually done in the texts we discuss. Where we have identified the author of anonymous publications, the name appears in brackets. A question mark indicates that we consider the author in brackets probable. All words placed in italics for emphasis are from original sources quoted. We use sic only in rare cases in which it seems indispensable. We are deeply grateful to Christopher Luse for helping us to collect mate- rials, checking references and quotations, and offering valuable criticisms of style and content. As Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s health was collapsing, Tina Trent’s kindness and innumerable professional and personal efforts on our behalf reached heroic proportions. For critical readings of versions of this book in draft we are indebted to Douglas Ambrose, Paul Conkin, Stanley L. Engerman, William W. Freehling, Jeannette Hopkins, Peter Kolchin, James Livingston, David Moltke-Hansen, Joseph Moore, Robert L. Paquette, Mark M. Smith, Sean Wilentz, and Clyde N. Wilson. ix Manuscript Collections Cited [∗ Manuscripts at the Southern Historical Collection, UNC] Sarah Eve Adams Diary∗ Samuel Agnew Diary∗ Elisha Allen Collection, at Georgia Department of Archives and History (Atlanta) Everard Green Baker Diary∗ David Alexander Barnes Diary∗ R. R. Barrow Residence Journal∗ Mary Eliza Battle Letters, at North Carolina State Archives (Raleigh) Mary Bethell Diary∗ J. H. Bills Papers∗ Keziah Brevard Diary, at USC Iveson Brookes Papers, at Duke University Lucy Wood Butler Diary∗ Cabell-Ellet Papers, at University of Virginia Franc M. Carmack Diary∗ Mary Eliza Carmichael Papers∗ Kate Carney Diary∗ Eliza Clitheral Autobiography∗ Cole-Taylor Papers∗ Juliana Margaret Connor Diary∗ John Hamilton Cornish Diary∗ J. B. Cottrel Diary∗ Edward Cross Papers, at University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) Louis M. De Saussure Plantation Record Book∗ Records of the Dialectic Society∗ Elliott-Gonzales Papers∗ Holden Garthur Evans Diary, at Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson) xi xii Manuscript Collections Cited Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher “Autobiography,” Summer, 1844, at Duke Uni- versity Albert E. Fossier Papers, at Historic New Orleans Collection Thomas Miles Garrett Diary∗ Sarah Gayle Diary∗ Julia A. Gilmer Diary∗ James H. Greenlee Diary∗ John Berkeley Grimball Diary∗ Meta Morris Grimball Journal∗ William Hooper Haigh Diary and Letters∗ Herndon Haralson Papers∗ Gustavus A. Henry Papers∗ George Frederick Holmes Letterbook, at Duke University Susan Nye Hutchinson Papers∗ Jackson–Prince Papers∗ Mitchell King Papers∗ Thomas Butler King Papers∗ Carl Kohn Letter Book, at Historic New Orleans Collection Francis Terry Leak Diary∗ Liddell Papers at LSU John Berrien Lindsley Papers, at Tennessee State Library and Archives (Nashville) Louis Manigault Diary, at Duke University Basil Manly Papers∗ Basil Manly, Jr., Papers∗ Jason Niles Diary∗ H. C. Nixon Collection, at Alabama Department of Archives and History (Montgomery) Dr. James Norcom Papers, at North Carolina State Archives (Raleigh) James H. Otey Papers∗ Palfrey Papers, at LSU William Porcher Miles Papers∗ William Campbell Preston Papers, at USC John A. Quitman Papers∗ Walker Reid Papers∗ Roach-Eggleston Papers∗ Edmund Ruffin Papers∗ Henry Ruffner Papers, at Washington and Lee University (Lexington) William Ruffin Smith Papers∗ Alonzo Snyder Papers, at LSU Frank F. Steel Papers∗ Francis Taylor Diary∗ Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas Diary, at Duke University Thornwell Papers, at USC Manuscript Collections Cited xiii William D. Valentine Diaries∗ John Walker Diary∗ Henry Young Webb Diary∗ [Wake County], Resolutions and Address of the Wake County Working-Men’s Association (Electronic ed.; Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002 [1859]) Calvin H. Wiley Papers∗ Abbreviations AJP The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. LeRoy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins (Knoxville, Tenn., 1967–) DBR De Bow’s Review DD Robert Lewis Dabney, Discussions: Evangelical and Theological, ed. C. R. Vaughan, 3 vols. (Carlisle, Pa., 1982) DNCB Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. William S. Powell, 6 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979–1994) ERD The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, ed. William Kaufman Scarborough, 3 vols. (Baton Rouge, La., 1972–1989) HLW Writings of Hugh Swinton Legare´ [ed. Mary S. Legare],´ 2 vols. (Charleston, S.C., 1846) JCCP The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. successively Robert Lee Meriwether, Edwin Hemphill, and Clyde N. Wilson, 26 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1959–2003) JDP The Papers of Jefferson Davis, ed. Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., James T. McIntosh, et al., 11 vols. (Baton Rouge, La., and Houston, Tex., 1971–2004) JHTW The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, ed.

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