Antebellum Literature and Thought, 2009-11

In this Virginia History Blog on five titles related to Antebellum literature and thought, we begin by looking at “The Origins of Proslavery Christianity” that documents developments among Virginia’s white and black evangelicals from colonial times into the antebellum period. “Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia” develops the conflicts within its white and black Baptist community from 1740 to 1840.

Related to the development of southern concept of “race”, for African Americans is the pseudo-scientific theory of genetically separate “Southron” and “Yankee” races described in the “Normans and Saxons”. “Confederate Minds” charts the efforts among Confederate “cultural nationalists” to create and perpetuate a distinctive southern culture.

Addressing the growth of Southern literature, “Edgar Allen Poe” examines the life of the Virginian poet in the context of his life and times during the Antebellum Era.

TVH Era Webpage

The TVH webpage for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Eras, 1824-1883, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years.

The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1824-1883 into (a) Antebellum Virginia Policy 1820-1850, (b) Antebellum Virginia Economics 1820-1850, (c) Sectionalism and Civil War 1850-1865, and Reconstruction Virginia Policy 1865-1883. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, and Religious Virginia.

African American Virginia, 1820-1883 is divided into (a) Plantation Slavery 1820-1865, (b) Free Blacks, Artisans and Slave Hires 1820-1850, and (c) Reconstruction African Americans 1863-1883. Finally, wars are featured under (1) Mexican War, (2) Civil War Combat and (3) CivilWar Home Front.

Origins of Proslavery Christianity

Charles F. Irons wrote The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia in 2008. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, Kindle and online new and used. A TVH top 300 pick for Virginia history sources.

Irons examines the interactions between black and white evangelicals primarily in antebellum Virginia leading up to the Civil War. In so doing, he concentrates on a key state significant for the size and leadership of its religious proslavery movement. Instead of casting developments as on a continuum of sectional dispute, Irons focuses on interactions within southern churches themselves, first in the late 1700s to the early national period, and then into the post-1831 era.

White missions among slaves allowed for African American choices and influence in their proselytizing resulting in a generation of black religious leaders and some independent black churches. Biracial churches with a spiritually vibrant black membership persisted because slaves chose to remain in them. White evangelicals spoke of mutual responsibility between master and slaves with Anglican slaveholders. Rather than emancipation, the emphasis was on white paternalism. The fullest expression of this sentiment came with the American Colonization Society to establish an independent black republic in Africa, and it attracted many Virginian African American evangelicals.

A turning point came with the 1830 Nat Turner Rebellion, with white evangelicals redoubling missionary efforts among the slaves along with teaching a proslavery theology. They reflected concerns about racial security over spiritual fellowship, and Virginians used slave mission success at “Christianization” of the African in their arguments against abolitionists. Still there was occasionally segregated worship led by black leaders in a continuing mutual negotiation between black and white evangelicals.

Buy “Origins of Proslavery Christianity” on Amazon here.

Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia

Randolph Ferguson Scully wrote Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740-1840 in 2008. Available from the University of Virginia Press and online new and used. A TVH top 300 pick for Virginia history sources. See also Ann Taves Fits, Trances, and Visions: experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James [1740-1820, 1820-1890] (1999).

Scully writes a social and cultural history from investigation of the records of early Baptist churches in Isle of Wight, Southampton and Sussex Counties in Virginia from mid-1700s to the 1830s. He seeks to understand biracial evangelical religion in the Revolutionary and Early National periods of American history. General, Regular and Particular Baptists united in 1787. Congregational debates over slavery resulted in a steady stream of slave manumissions from antislavery activists.

But during the 1810s and 1820s, white efforts to marginalize black congregants by changing voting practices and preaching rights had the unforeseen result of increasing the independence of black Baptists rather than extending white control. Post-Revolutionary blacks clung to the Separatist wing of radical theology from the Great Awakening. Black spiritual and political equality could not be both celebrated and suppressed. At the Nat Turner Rebellion that used Baptist language and traditions to declare independence, the bold attempt to create a biracial religious movement ended with the unification of white only membership.

Buy “Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia” on Amazon here.

Normans and Saxons: Southern Race Mythology

Ritchie Devon Watson Jr. wrote Normans and Saxons: Southern Race Mythology and the Intellectual History of the American Civil War in 2009. Available from the University of Virginia Press, Kindle and online new and used. A companion to David M. Potter The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976). See also William R. Taylor Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (1961, 1993), and Jason Philips Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (2007).

This book addresses an early 19^th century race theory about American whites. Throughout the 1850s, southerners seriously considered the differences between the peoples of the sections, North and South. By 1860, some secessionists proposed that they were not merely a “divided people”, but “two scientifically distinct races” with an innate, biological divide perpetuating distinct physical, intellectual and moral traits. The white people of the South were the racially aristocratic Normans, Cavaliers, “Southrons” who would not negotiate, compromise or concede to a “crass and materialistic Yankee race”.

Sir Walter Scott and southern sales of his Ivanhoe figured importantly, matching contemporary northern sales of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. So did widely read authors such as William Gilmore Simms, John Pendleton Kennedy, Virginians William A. Caruthers and George Tucker, and southern periodicals such as De Bow’s Review and Richmond’s Southern Quarterly Review. The Norman-Cavalier race mythology was prominent through the 1850s to justify secession, in the 1860s to steel the Confederate wartime resolve, and subsequently in memorials to the Lost Cause.

Buy “Normans and Saxons” on Amazon here. Also from this author The Cavalier in Virginia Fiction (1985).

Confederate Minds

Michael T. Bernath wrote Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South in 2010. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. See also Michael O’Brien Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860: An Abridged Edition of Conjectures of Order (2012) [the original publication is a TVH top 300 pick for Virginia History resources], and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview (2005).

In the Spring of 1861, secessionist partisans believed that one of the most pressing needs for the newly created Confederate nation was a national literature of world class novels, political theory, scientific papers and religious tracts. The idea was to become a truly independent people by freeing themselves by supplanting Yankee and European influences with their own homegrown ideas.

These Confederate literati sought to establish an enabling infrastructure of publishing houses, schools, booksellers, newspapers and magazines to publish distinctly Southern authors as an attempt to establish Confederate nationalism. Despite shortages of printing paper, ink and presses, Bernath charts an avalanche of books and articles on a multitude of subjects. Yet Confederate citizen critics were disappointed with the results. The war years did see a substantial increase in book and magazine sales, but the development of a distinct literature on the world stage remained a long term goal that was unfulfilled over the course of four mid-century years.

Buy “Confederate Minds” on Amazon here.

Edgar Allen Poe

Kevin J. Hayes wrote Edgar Allen Poe in 2009. It is available from Reaktion Books, on Kindle and online new and used. See also J. Gerald Kennedy Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (2001), and Theresa Goddu Gothic America (1997).

This introductory biography portrays the Virginian Edgar Allen Poe as a pioneering professional author who attempted the publication of his stories in collections rather than single items in magazines. Poe saw connections between tourism and the creation of author celebrity.

In a time of scanty and unsystematic compensation for literary authors living by their own means, Poe sought to make a independent career as a writer. As an author, he experimented with gothic forms and popular sentimental fiction. His detective stories were from an urbanite’s vantage point.

Buy “Edgar Allen Poe” on Amazon here. Also by this author, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2008), and The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas (2008).