Relevance at a Cost

The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century By Carl Degler Harper, 392 pp., $10 Professor Degler’s subject is an interesting one, interestingly put. He writes of the “white Southerners during the nineteenth century who stood out against the prevailing views of their region while remaining there. . . . those Southerners who opposed slavery, supported the Union, rejected the Democratic Party in the 1880s, and joined the People’s Party in the 1890s.” All good enough, and told in fine fashion. Degler writes with verve. Even the students sent to read him will be spared pain and given pleasure.

The book also looks as if it should please the historians. As a scholarly synthesis, it is based on a seemingly endless number of little fact-finding studies each of which has taken some segment of Southern life and quantified the relation of, say, its economic wealth to its religious preference, or the density of its black population to its support of the Whig Party, or some such other. What historians should like is the fact that Degler gives the very definite impression that all these little studies move in his hands toward some final synthesis in which each laborer has his place and vital function. The whole profession thus seems justified and beautifully inviting, so much of its day to day functioning requiring then little or no talent, just a professor’s leisure, a methodology, and a grant.

VM

About the Author

Vincent Miller

Featured Tags

The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century By Carl Degler Harper, 392 pp., $10 Professor Degler’s subject is an interesting one, interestingly put. He writes of the “white Southerners during the nineteenth century who stood out against the prevailing views of their region while remaining there. . . . those Southerners who opposed slavery, supported the Union, rejected the Democratic Party in the 1880s, and joined the People’s Party in the 1890s.” All good enough, and told in fine fashion. Degler writes with verve. Even the students sent to read him will be spared pain and given pleasure.

The book also looks as if it should please the historians. As a scholarly synthesis, it is based on a seemingly endless number of little fact-finding studies each of which has taken some segment of Southern life and quantified the relation of, say, its economic wealth to its religious preference, or the density of its black population to its support of the Whig Party, or some such other. What historians should like is the fact that Degler gives the very definite impression that all these little studies move in his hands toward some final synthesis in which each laborer has his place and vital function. The whole profession thus seems justified and beautifully inviting, so much of its day to day functioning requiring then little or no talent, just a professor’s leisure, a methodology, and a grant.