Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 [Paperback]

Lacy K. Ford Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0195069617 | ISBN-13: 978-0195069617

In the sixty years before the American Civil War, the South Carolina Upcountry evolved from an isolated subsistence region that served as a stronghold of Jeffersonian Republicanism into a mature cotton-producing region with a burgeoning commercial sector that served as a hotbed of Southern radicalism. This groundbreaking study examines this startling evolution, tracing the growth, logic, and strategy of pro-slavery radicalism and the circumstances and values of white society and politics to analyze why the white majority of the Old South ultimately supported the secession movement that led to bloody civil war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Unquestionably the finest book on an antebellum southern state since J. Mills Thornton's Politics and Power in a Slave Society....His major contribution...is not to explain uniqueness but rather to portray convincingly a state sharing much with the other states of the cotton South....In sum, Lacy K. Ford has written a major book."--Journal of Southern History

"Excellent....A major contribution to the history of South Carolina."--South Carolina Historical Magazine

"An important book....A carefully researched, well-written analysis."--Civil War History

"Both undergraduate and graduate readers will benefit from this revealing look at the Old South's bellwether state."--Choice

"This is a superb book. It carefully situates republican ideology in its social, economic, and political context and skillfully portrays interrelationships between ideas and social reality."--Georgia Historical Quarterly

About the Author

Lacy K. Ford is at University of South Carolina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 28, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195069617
• ISBN-13: 978-0195069617
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,402,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Analysis of social/economic factors leading to the civil war, June 25, 2000

By 

Alex Diffey (Charlotte, North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (Paperback)

"Origins of Southern Radicalism..." traces the evolution of Upstate South Carolina from a frontier of subsistance farms to a cotton and slave dependent society preceding the civil war. It reflects the economic situation (supported by a surprising amount of data), the development of trading, merchants and towns, the religious sentiments of the time, and how the mixture of cotton, money, society and externally ineffective religious conviction led to disharmony and war. If anyone wants a clear window into the conditions and issues that led to our Nation's worst horrors, read this book.

"Origins" is academic in nature, and a "slow read". But, it needs to be in order to accurately document what was going in the decades leading up to the civil war. The book is built on primary evidence, and is as unfiltered a flow of facts and events as is possible. The author shows no Northern/Southern bias - just reveals the facts of the times. More than any of the numerous books I have read on the civil war, this one answers the biggest questions: "How was this tragedy of slavery perpetuated and how did this horrible war happen?"

There is a lesson here for all future generations concerned about human rights and the failure of politics to achieve favorable outcomes.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb example of factor analysis at its outer limits!, March 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (Paperback)

As an insatiable devourer of antebellum studies, I heartily concur with Mr. Diffey's comments below concerning this astute, if somewhat textually dense, socio-political analysis the Old South. Only W. J. Cash's seminal "Mind of the South"; the superbly myth-busting "The Southern Agrarians" by Conkin; Blassingame's somber and sobering "The Slave Community"; and Wyatt-Brown's indispensable capstone study "Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South" are in the same league, in my estimation.

As a systems analyst, moreover, I'd like to share my appreciation for a valuable lesson this book offers to anyone attempting to construct or evaluate a "factor analysis" of historical events, or any other complex dynamics.

There's a principle in cognitive/systems theory to the effect that the all-too-finite human mind can contain only so many discrete concepts at once -- the number is classically stated as "seven, plus or minus two". Look at a random batch of examples of visually displayed information, for example, and you'll find yourself boggling over any of them with more than 7-9 boxes, symbols, or whatever, to be considered as an integrated whole.

Ford's book is instructive because he posits about seven factors (as I recall, plus or minus one), as each being necessary for the rise of the uniquely radical tenor of South Carolinian politics in the antebellum era. He reviews other analyst's attempts to do with various combinations of three or four of these factors (the one-party system, Calhoun's overwhelming personality, etc.), but manages to argue convincingly that no less than the whole lot were crucial -- the absence of any one of them would have vitiated the collective dynamic which led to the South Carolinians' intransigence, even by the other Southern states' standards, and their initiatory secession.

The appreciative reader has to both salute Mr. Ford on his masterly delineation of the key factors and their interactions, and wonder whether anyone could pull off a convincing resolution of a complex issue employing very many more factors than those required here.

In any case, the book is a tour-de-force in the art and science of reducing amorphous data to concrete elements of an overall pattern, as well as a potentially sobering object lesson on the outer limits of intelligibility/communicability confronting anyone considering the pursuit of a similar objective.

P.S. "The Japanese Mind", by the dauntingly accomplished R. C. Christopher, achieves a correspondingly complex feat with regard to Japanese culture, and is highly recommended -- as are "Fragile Glory" by Bernstein, for anyone wanting to understand the dual (and dueling) nations of France and Paris, and Luigi Barzini's "The Italians", for similar gratification on that national/cultural front. On the U.S. socio-cultural scene, do read Aldrich's "Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth In America", for all that's essential to and fascinating about this rarefied, hyper-enfranchised psychosocial stratum....