Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Prologue
- PART ONE CRADLED IN THE STORMS OF REVOLUTION
- PART TWO THE INESCAPABLE PAST
- 4 History as Moral and Political Instruction
- 5 The Slaveholders' Quest for a History of the Common People
- 6 World History and the Politics of Slavery
- 7 History as the Story of Freedom
- PART THREE ANCIENT LEGACIES, MEDIEVAL SENSIBILITY, MODERN MEN
- PART FOUR A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE DEFEND THE FAITH
- PART FIVE AT THE RUBICON
- Epilogue: King Solomon's Dilemma
- Supplementary References
- Index
6 - World History and the Politics of Slavery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Prologue
- PART ONE CRADLED IN THE STORMS OF REVOLUTION
- PART TWO THE INESCAPABLE PAST
- 4 History as Moral and Political Instruction
- 5 The Slaveholders' Quest for a History of the Common People
- 6 World History and the Politics of Slavery
- 7 History as the Story of Freedom
- PART THREE ANCIENT LEGACIES, MEDIEVAL SENSIBILITY, MODERN MEN
- PART FOUR A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE DEFEND THE FAITH
- PART FIVE AT THE RUBICON
- Epilogue: King Solomon's Dilemma
- Supplementary References
- Index
Summary
The surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the calamities of others. … It is only indeed by the study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.
—PolybiusNon-European history and cultures enchanted curious Southerners, as they did Northerners. By 1860, history for Southerners had become world history, and they took special pleasure in evidence of the ubiquity of slavery. Thomas Cobb, Georgia's legal scholar, concluded that slavery was “more universal than marriage and more permanent than liberty.” He introduced his influential book, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery, with a discussion of its origins, development, and extent in ancient Egypt, India, Africa, and the Far East, and a review of the extent not merely of serfs but of slaves in medieval and early modern Europe. For Thomas Roderick Dew, the histories of Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa “conclusively mark the evidence of slavery over these boundless regions.” George Sawyer of Louisiana opened his proslavery tract, Southern Institutes, with Aristotle and other early authorities to demonstrate that the master-slave relation, in some form, provided the basis of social order.
Southerners believed that world history vindicated them as slaveholders and demonstrated that civilization itself rose on the backs of subjugated laborers.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Mind of the Master ClassHistory and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview, pp. 201 - 224Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005