COMMENTARY MEL BR ADFORD’S SCHOLARLY LEGACY AT 20 Sean R. Busick and H. Lee Cheek Jr. he late Mel Bradford (1934–1993) was would remain at Dallas until his untimely Ttruly one of the giants of the postwar death in 1993. conservative intellectual movement. A Texan As a writer, Bradford was an essayist. He (born in Fort Worth), Bradford earned his collected and published his essays in half a BA and MA degrees in English at the Uni- dozen major books. A Better Guide than Rea- versity of Oklahoma before going to Vander- son (1979), A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of bilt for his PhD. At Vanderbilt from 1959 to the Framers of the United States Constitution 1962, he studied under Donald Davidson, (1982), and Original Intentions: On the Mak- who was probably the most faithfully con- ing and Ratification of the United States Con- servative of the twelve southern agrarians stitution (1993) all deal with the Revolution besides Andrew Lytle. Under Davidson’s and early republic. In this same vein, he also guidance, Bradford produced a dissertation edited one of the first agrarian manifestos, on William Faulkner. After graduation, he John Taylor of Caroline’s Arator (1977), and taught English at several schools before end- coedited (with the southern conservative ing up at the University of Dallas in 1967. He constitutional-law expert James McClellan) Elliot’s Debates in the Several State Conven- tions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitu- tion (1989). Sean R. Busick is associate professor of history at Athens State University and past president of the Bradford’s other books, Generations of William Gilmore Simms Society. He is the author of the Faithful Heart (1983—the title is taken A Sober Desire for History: William Gilmore Simms as from the last line of Davidson’s great poem Historian and The Founding of the American Republic, “Lee in the Mountains”), Remembering Who among other titles. We Are: Observations of a Southern Conserva- H. Lee Cheek Jr. is dean of social sciences at East tive (1985), and The Reactionary Imperative Georgia State College and a senior fellow of the Alex- ander Hamilton Institute. His books include Political (1990) deal broadly with issues of southern Philosophy and Cultural Renewal and Calhoun and literature and conservatism. Bradford also Popular Rule, among others. edited a number of important books: a 75 MODERN AGE WINTER 2015 collection of Andrew Lytle’s essays, titled important to note the order of these labels. From Eden to Babylon: The Social and Politi- He was a southerner first, and because he cal Essays of Andrew Nelson Lytle (1990); the was a southerner, he was also both an agrar- first collection of critical essays on Lytle’s ian and a conservative. Bradford’s southern work, The Form Discovered: Essays on the identity so thoroughly permeates his life Achievement of Andrew Lytle (1973); and and work that there is little need to dwell the book that Richard Weaver, another stu- on it. However, considerably less attention dent of Davidson as well as of John Crowe has been given to his agrarianism. Ransom, had made out of his dissertation, Paul Murphy, in his recent and uneven The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of study of southern agrarians from I’ll Take Postbellum Thought (1968). My Stand to the present, The Rebuke of His- He was also one of the fifteen scholars tory, is the exception. He treats Bradford as who again took their stand by contributing one of the most important modern heirs of an essay to Clyde Wilson’s volume Why the the southern agrarian tradition, along with South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look Wendell Berry (the Henry County Kentucky at Their Region a Half Century after “I’ll Take farmer-novelist-poet-essayist), John Shelton My Stand” (1980). Additionally, Bradford Reed (the Chapel Hill sociologist who has wrote scores of essays for Modern Age, the spent his career studying southern culture), Intercollegiate Review, Chronicles, and many and Clyde Wilson (the historian from the other journals. And then finally, he was University of South Carolina who is the working on a biography of Davidson when world’s foremost authority on John C. Cal- he died. Eventually the Davidson biogra- houn, as well as the editor of Why the South phy was finished by the late Mark Royden Will Survive and the Bradford festschrift, A Winchell. Defender of Southern Conservatism). There are some problems with Murphy’s radford was a southern agrarian con- book, but he has probably identified the Bservative, although he preferred to call four most prominent modern disciples of himself a reactionary: “Reaction is a nec- the Twelve Southerners Who Took Their essary term in the intellectual context we Stand. But only one of them, Berry, is what inhabit in the twentieth century because we might call a practical agrarian. Berry lives merely to conserve is sometimes to per- the agrarian life—however, we should note petuate what is outrageous,” he wrote in that his agrarianism does not derive from I’ll The Reactionary Imperative. He was, in this Take My Stand; he only read it after taking respect, like John Lukacs, who described his personal stand in Henry County. As for reactionaries thus: “A reactionary consid- the other three, they are what we might call ers character but distrusts publicity; he is political agrarians. To the best of our knowl- a patriot but not a nationalist; he favors edge, neither Bradford nor Wilson ever even conservation rather than technology; he kept a home garden. We have less personal believes in history, not in Evolution. A knowledge of Reed, but we doubt he keeps reactionary will recognize how . An much of a garden either. This does not make Idea Whose Time Has Come may not be them hypocrites. Of the Twelve Southerners any good.”1 Bradford would have added a who contributed to the original agrarian hearty “amen.” So he was a southern agrar- manifesto, few had much real experience ian conservative, or “reactionary.” It is on the farm. Many of them were also politi- 76 MEL BRADFORD’S SCHOLARLY LEGACY AT 20 cal, rather than practical, agrarians. Indeed, Centralization was substituted for “social even Thomas Jefferson struggled as a farmer. bond” individualism. No longer would None of this takes away from their sincerity society be held together by individuals who and seriousness. were bound to each other in their natural One of the common threads that families, churches, and communities. With connects Bradford’s (as well as Wendell traditional bonds dissolved, society would be Berry’s and Clyde Wilson’s) thought to the held together only by uniting each individual agrarianism of the Twelve Southerners is to a centralized state—that is, society would what Richard Weaver (another Vanderbilt be held together by force instead of love. graduate) called “social bond” individual- The agrarians believed that society ism. Writing of John Randolph of Roanoke, should be organized on a human scale. And, Weaver observed, “By instinct Randolph was because they accepted the idea of original perhaps a secessionist—every individualist sin and St. Augustine’s vision of the City of is a secessionist in regard to many things. Man and the City of God (that the City of Individualism is a rejection of presumptive Man was finite and corrupt and therefore control from without. But Randolph never could never be perfected), they rejected any lost sight of the truth expressed in Aristotle’s faith in certain Progress or the perfectibility dictum that man is a political animal. His of man. individualism is, therefore, what I am going “Because they were Southern (and hence to call ‘social bond’ individualism. It battles rather more European by inheritance than unremittingly for individual rights, while American intellectuals from the north or recognizing that these have to be secured west), the political vision of the Agrarians within the social context.”2 This “social conformed not at all to the familiar native bond” individualism that Weaver identified political categories: in a word, they were has been one of the distinguishing character- neither ‘liberty men’ nor ‘equality men,’” istics of both agrarianism and southern con- Bradford explained in his essay “The Agrari- servatism. And Weaver was not just another anism of Richard Weaver.” “Their measure agrarian. He was essential to understanding of any polity was its human (and not its legal agrarian thought. Bradford believed that or economic) product. As a body they were Weaver completed the moral and political doubtful about ‘Progress’—and even doubt- enterprise of the original agrarians.3 ful that the appearance of the ‘progressive,’ The heart of the agrarian moral and post bellum United States on the stage of political enterprise was recognition of the history was in the long run to be of certain threat posed to traditional communities benefit to Western man.”4 and ways of life and thought by industrial- Here, too, is how Bradford explained it ism and applied science. The agrarians saw, in his essay “The Agrarian Tradition”: “For earlier than most, that industrialism and the Agrarians, the measure of any economic applied science were not simply benign ways or political system was its human product. of improving our material standard of living. Goods, services, and income are, to this Rather, they were ways of organizing society. way of thinking, subsidiary to the basic When enlisted in the causes of Progress and cultural consideration, the overall form of Equality, industrialism and applied science life produced. Of course, the Agrarians were dissolved the traditional social bonds that anti-egalitarian. They knew the abstract united individuals and held society together. drive toward Equality .