The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview

by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese , Eugene D. Genovese

• ISBN13: 9780521850650
• ISBN10: 0521850657
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Mind of the Master Class tells of America's greatest historical tragedy. It presents the slaveholders as men and women, a great many of whom were intelligent, honorable, and pious. It asks how people who were admirable in so many ways could have presided over a social system that proved itself an enormity and inflicted horrors on their slaves. The South had formidable proslavery intellectuals who participated fully in transatlantic debates and boldly challenged an ascendant capitalist ('free-labor') society. Blending classical and Christian traditions, they forged a moral and political philosophy designed to sustain conservative principles in history, political economy, social theory, and theology, while translating them into political action. Even those who judge their way of life most harshly have much to learn from their probing moral and political reflections on their times - and ours - beginning with the virtues and failings of their own society and culture.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, where she was founding director of Women's Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
List of Abbreviations	xii
Prologue	1	(10)
PART ONE: CRADLED IN THE STORMS OF REVOLUTION
``That Terrible Tragedy''	11	(30)
The Age of Revolution through Slaveholding Eyes	41	(28)
``The Purest Sons of Freedom''	69	(56)
Entr'acte: The Bonds of Slavery	88	(37)
PART TWO: THE INESCAPABLE PAST
History as Moral and Political Instruction	125	(45)
The Slaveholders' Quest for a History of the Common People	170	(31)
World History and the Politics of Slavery	201	(24)
History as the Story of Freedom	225	(24)
PART THREE: ANCIENT LEGACIES, MEDIEVAL SENSIBILITY, MODERN MEN
In the Shadow of Antiquity	249	(56)
Coming to Terms with the Middle Ages	305	(24)
The Chivalry	329	(36)
Chivalric Slave Masters	365	(18)
Chivalric Politics: Southern Ladies Take Their Stand	383	(26)
PART FOUR: A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE DEFEND THE FAITH
A Christian People	409	(35)
Unity and Diversity among the Faithful	444	(29)
War over the Good Book	473	(32)
Slavery: Proceeding from the Lord	505	(23)
The Holy Spirit in the Word of God	528	(38)
Jerusalem and Athens -- Against Paris	566	(21)
Serpent in the Garden: Liberal Theology in the South	587	(26)
Theopolitics: Golden Rule, Higher Law, and Slavery	613	(23)
Coda: St. John of Pottawatamie	636	(13)
PART FIVE: AT THE RUBICON
Between Individualism and Corporatism: From the Reformation to the War for Southern Independence	649	(31)
Past and Future Caesars	680	(31)
Epilogue: King Solomon's Dilemma	711	(8)
Supplementary References	719	(74)
Index	793