The Conservative Mind of the Old South

(p. 91). Genovese's own evidence, however, suggests that most southerners, including the strongly proslavery John C. Calhoun and James H. Hammond, studiously refrained from any universal endorsement of slavery as a labor system, instead resting their full-throated defense of slavery on the specific historical contingencies (white citizens, black slaves) of the Old South's circumstances. But regardless of whether or not the Old South produced a serious brief for slavery in the abstract, they certainly developed a sharp critique of free labor and an elaborate argument that slavery, by combining the interests of labor and capital in humane masters and protecting republican citizens from the degradation of dependence, served as a better social foundation for progress and republican freedom than did free labor. Predictably, this tortured argument fell largely on deaf ears outside the South, and by the 1850s it was becoming abundantly clear that the South could not win the war of words over slavery. The slaveholders' preferred of their dilemma, that of defining slavery as the best foundation for progress and white liberty instead of as an obstacle to progress and freedom, was rejected in the court of world opinion. But with their way out blocked, what could the South do to defend itself? They could remain in the Union as an increasingly besieged region and depend on longstanding constitutional safeguards to protect them, or they could boldly secede from the Union and form an independent southern nation, a perfect slaveholders' republic. Neither option was without enormous risk, and Genovese finds southern intellectuals of the 1850s well aware of their predicament. Disunion was the decisive course, but such radical adventurism required southerners to destroy the Union their forefathers had done so much to create three-quarters of a century earlier. Yet remaining in the Union was a sort of lethal paralysis, to die a slow and certain death rather than risk all to gain all. Faced with this desperate choice, the sons and grandsons of revolutionaries became revolutionaries themselves, reluctant rebels for a conservative cause. Secession and the formation of a southern confederacy became the slaveholders' final, and fatal, out. The Fire-eaters, Eric Walther's thoroughly researched and carefully crafted study of nine leading radicals, adds valuable depth to our understanding of the secession movement's leadership cadre. Walther defines a fire-eater as an individual who was a persistent advocate of secession and southern indepenThis content downloaded from 207.46.13.101 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 05:29:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 596 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / DECEMBER 1993 dence over an extended period of years. Last-minute converts, like the many who joined the radical cause as Republican victory in 1860 seemed probable, may have provided the crucial margin of victory for secession at the polls in the winter of 1860-61, but Walther rightly reasons that these newcomers to the radical ranks joined a movement whose broad contours had been well established by long-time secessionists. On the whole, Walther's approach, the use of loosely representative biographies, works well, as he explores the backgrounds, the private lives, the public careers, and, most importantly, the thought of prominent fire-eaters. Walther finds that his subjects came to their radicalism from a variety of backgrounds, ambitions, and political perspectives. Among his nine fire-eaters were Whigs and Democrats, inheritors of great wealth and self-made men, the pious and the skeptical, businessmen and wastrels, agricultural reformers and industrial promoters, scholars and hellions, old-line southerners and northem-bred newcomers. What these radicals had in common, according to Walther, was not background or experience, but a shared commitment to the idea of an independent southern slaveholding republic. Each of the nine fire-eaters studied brought some special talent or drive to the movement. Robert Barnwell Rhett brought skill at political agitation, William L. Yancey a keen sense of political opportunism, J. D. B. DeBow a sharp statistical bent and a knowledge of economic development, and John Quitman a spirit of military adventure. Nathaniel Beverley Tucker and William Porcher Miles lent intellectual credibility, Laurence M. Keitt and Louis T. Wigfall brought political daring and a willingness to defy odds, and Edmund Ruffin contributed the single-minded devotion to cause essential to those who would make a revolution. In the end, Walther concludes, these men of diverse backgrounds and talents came together as fire-eaters because they saw secession as the slaveholding South's only chance for long-term survival. Echoing Genovese, Walther argues that, for the fire-eaters, remaining in the Union meant, at best, second-class citizenship and economic vassalage, or, at worst, emancipation and war for racial survival. After many fits and starts, the fire-eaters, aided by the success of the avowedly antislavery Republican party in the North, guided the South of the Union, but, as Walther points out, these long-time radicals were surprisingly unprepared to govern the Confederacy. The obsessive fear of centralized power which the fire-eaters both cultivated and manipulated through the years as they spearheaded the secession movement eventually contributed significantly to weakness of Confederate nationalism and helped push the long-hoped for Confederacy toward its bloody demise. While Walther is right to emphasize diversity among his fire-eaters, his own thorough account reveals a couple of common themes that his analysis This content downloaded from 207.46.13.101 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 05:29:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FORD / The Conservative Mind of the Old South 597 does not develop as fully as it might. First, with the revealing exception of Yancey, none of Walther's fire-eaters emerged from the egalitarian mainstream of the Jacksonian Democratic party. The rest were an odd assortment of Old Republicans, Nullifiers, states' rights Whigs, and elitist tidewater Democrats. This pattern suggests the path of sustained radicalism seldom ran through the majority (and majoritarian) wing of the Democratic party and that a common characteristic among long-time fire-eaters was a deep distrust of the democratic impulse and a sentimental preference for the gentrified politics of the early republic, when property often balanced numbers as a source of political power. In the end, of course, these protectors of minority rights succeeded only by convincing a majority of white southerners, but, Yancey excepted, these fire-eaters had seldom been champions of white man's democracy or majority rule. Second, most of the fire-eaters profiled by Walther exhibited at least one other passion nearly as fierce as their devotion to southern nationalism. For Tucker, this passion was teaching, the chance to influence impressionable young minds; for Miles it was erudition and scholarship; for DeBow industrial promotion; for Keitt and Wigfall it was wine, women, and honor; for Quitman it was fame and fortune; for Alabama's Yancey the passion was politics, pure and simple; and the driven Ruffin had a consuming interest in agricultural reform. In a peculiarly southern way, these passionate men were reformers convinced that secession was the only reform capable of stopping the corruption of the republic by fanatical northern majorities. Even though he does not fully develop the point, Walther's fireeaters, as radical conservatives, were not only more elitist and less egalitarian than the Old South as a whole, but they were also its leading reformers, preaching secession as the last best hope for the restoration of republican

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