Product Details

The New York Times - Ira Berlin

For Lacy K. Ford, the division between the states of the upper South (Virginia along with the border slave states) and those of the lower South (South Carolina and the cotton-producing states to its south and west) best explains how white Southerners "understood their position with regard to slavery, and how they saw themselves as citizens of the United States right down to secession and Civil War"…Ford painstakingly unravels the divergent perspectives on slavery, making Deliver Us From Evil required reading for anyone interested in the development of Southern society.

Publishers Weekly

That “southern white views on the slavery question varied across space and changed over time” may not appear to be news, yet through depth, detail and focus, Ford's comprehensive study forges a fresh path. Crosscutting along geographical lines, separating the upper and lower South, Ford (Origins of Southern Radicalism) follows a chronological trail between 1787 and 1840 as he focuses on “the evolution of white attitudes and slaveholder ideology over time.” While the historical detail is engrossing, Ford's eye remains on the consequences of events upon the emerging ideology. As upper South advocates of “whitening the region” instigated “a demographic reconfiguration of slavery,” for example, selling their slaves to the lower South, the lower South's ideological restructuring replaced coercion with paternalism. Ford's monumental book delineates a “twisted and tortured” intellectual history; signs of his mastery of previous scholarship and his immersion in fresh primary sources abound. Formidable detail threatens to overwhelm, but Ford's lucid prose and summary introductions illuminate the way. Lay readers will appreciate his guidance, and academic readers will find his revelations groundbreaking. (Sept.)

Library Journal

In this trenchant study of "the slavery question" from the early republic to the Jacksonian Age, Ford (history, Univ. of South Carolina) tracks the evolution of the South's thinking about slavery. Upper South whites moved from ambivalence toward the idea of slavery as a threat to the Republic to seeking to diffuse slaves farther south. Lower South whites sought to secure more slaves through the foreign slave trade, but worried about becoming overwhelmed by too many black slaves. Slave rebellions and abolitionist efforts caused Southern whites to reassess their positions on slavery. What emerged, argues Ford in his most provocative section, was a Southern paternalism that bound upper and lower Southerners together in a common rationale for maintaining slavery. An ideology of white supremacy assured planters control over other whites amid a rising political democracy. VERDICT Ford's book does not supplant earlier treatments, such as Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's The Mind of the Master Class, but it does provide an intricate, textured argument about the intellectual, social, and political interests shaping "the slavery question," as well as a reminder that Southern white commitment to a hardened proslavery position was not preordained or one-dimensional. Essential for all students of this subject.—Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents