Quintessence of the South:
FLANDERS, RALPH B.
Quintessence of the South The Burden of Southern History. By C. Vana Woodward. Louisiana State. 205 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Ralph Flanders Associate professor of history, New York...
...One has only to converse casually with a Southerner to see that the average educated Southern layman has some rather strange ideas about his section's past...
...The South is not taken to task for its unwise decisions, nor is it praised or excused...
...Defeated in its effort to establish a new nation, reconstructed by a victorious North, "redeemed" by its own leaders and nursed by Northern philanthropists, the wonder is that the South is not even more intransigent than it is...
...The South's heritage was molded by an experience that is more complex and varied than that of the other sections of the United States, he points out...
...and it is must reading for all professional Southerners...
...And the eight essays that make up this book, all but one of which have previously appeared in various scholarly publications, deal with certain aspects of that experience...
...In his effort to interpret the South's history, however, the author carefully avoids all moral judgments...
...Its historical burden has been one of defeat in war followed by long years of grinding poverty...
...It has even been argued that bugs have determined regional unity...
...Professor Woodward, quite properly, is dissatisfied with all of these interpretations...
...The people developed a set of beliefs to explain what happened and eventually came up with new theories as to what actually occurred...
...Woodward thinks the South is "immune from the disintegrating effect of nationalism and conformity" because of its unique history: defeat in Civil War, Reconstruction and the Populist Movement...
...This is a brilliant book, written by one of our most distinguished historians, which upsets theories and explanations that have long been considered sound...
...New England and the West have never posed any particular difficulties in an analysis of their characteristics, but there is a welter of confusion once you cross the Potomac...
...Reviewed by Ralph Flanders Associate professor of history, New York University Since before the Civil War, writers and scholars have tried to discover what makes the South eternally and peculiarly "Southern" despite vast changes in the character of the rest of the nation...
...Writers have attempted to explain the South by finding unifying factors that characterize the region: selective migration (Cavaliers instead of Puritans), climate, the problem of race and white supremacy, states' rights, the expansion and decline of the Cotton Kingdom and the tariff issue have all been explored...
...If anyone wants to understand the South, the book will give him the opportunity...
Vol. 44 • May 1961 • No. 19
