Book Review

If, like this reviewer, you were reared and nurtured on stories of the "Old South" and the "Lost Cause," you may be chagrinned to learn how these attitudes grew. However, here is an author we can trust.

James C. Cobb is B. Phinizy Spalding Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He has written many award-winning books and articles, and clearly knows whereof he speaks. He speaks with wit and intelligence in this carefully documented history of Southern identity.

In the opening chapter, "Cavalier and Yankee," he discusses how the "northern-based print culture" treated the South as "the other" not really part of their United States. New England and the Northern states were seen as the "real" America, long before slavery became an issue.

The investment in slaves meant that the Southern planter owned little manufacturing stock. All differences were not economic. Seventeen percent of the South's free adult population was illiterate, compared with six percent in the North. There were also differences in publications, health, climate, schools, etc. Contrasting with the Puritan belief in the individual conscience was the concept of "honor" for the Southern white male.

European romanticism (especially seen in devotion to Sir Walter Scott's novels) and an interest in Greek antiquity led to the Greek Revival movement in the South. A preoccupation with nostalgia and loss contributed to exalting an imagined past. Like their northern neighbors, the Southerners considered themselves the "true Americans."

After the war, Southerners found unity in resentment of defeat. Their grievance was directed at the North, not the United States, but they still found it difficult to celebrate the Fourth of July for many years. Immediately after the war, Southern historians were expected to vindicate and justify the stand of the South.

Cobb explains how, as the years passed, Southern leaders developed the concept of the "New South." "Although the Lost Cause ethos responded to the emotional, racial, and political needs of many white Southerners, it offered no solutions to the postbellum economic crisis threatening the entire region." Ending Reconstruction, and then moving on to expanding manufacturing became important goals.

Cobb's discussion of Southern literature and the Northern response is complete and interesting. Ellen Glasgow, Robert Penn Warren, Thomas Wolfe, and Erskine Caldwell receive their due, before we move on to extensive attention to William Faulkner.

Gone With the Wind is also dealt with, as "more critical and complex than it appears." From the Southern Renaissance, Cobb moves to the Harlem Renaissance and how the Southern African-American rediscovered his Southern roots.

Cobb states that he has "spent the last 35 years pondering the question of Southern exceptionalism," how living here is different from living in other parts of the country. "Ultimately," he says, "instead of destroying the "Southern way of life," the overthrow of Jim Crow seemed to result in a broader, biracial effort to keep it alive, although often on dramatically different terms."

Away Down South is highly recommended and is available at the Mary Willis Library.