Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood - Cambridge Studies on the American South | Historical Analysis of Slavery & National Identity | Perfect for US History Scholars & Civil War Research

In this persuasively argued volume, Robert Bonner has tackled the issue of southern nationalism unlike anyone since John McCardell's seminal work, The Idea of a Southern Nation, which was published over thirty years ago. Combining intellectual, political, social, cultural, and religious history, Bonner has given us one of the best single volume works on how slaveholders shaped nationalism and contributed to the American project of becoming national. In doing this, Bonner shows the reader that there was a definite change over time in the south. While many Southern politicians and intellectuals wanted to accommodate competing sectional interests during the period of national growth after the American Revolution because of fears of European invasion, by the 1840's and 1850's a new generation of politicians and intellectuals were arguing that slavery was no longer safe in the Union and the south needed their own nation.Bonner exemplifies this change over time in several ways. In the realm of politics, Southern politicians, Bonner argues, felt that an overtly proslavery message would do more harm than good and avoided discussion of slavery in public, for the most part. By the 1850's, proslavery politicians, such as James Henry Hammond, felt that slavery would become stronger through public discussion and wanted to prove slavery's compatibility with American values and visions. Bonner makes another interesting point regarding the change over time, showing that early proslavery efforts were in pursuit of a particular objective. By the 1850's, proslavery efforts were valued in their own right, regardless of the objective. In the realm of intellectual life, early Southern writers had avoided adding slavery to their works, much like politicians had largely avoided talking about slavery in public. Bonner argues that by the 1840's, many writers believed that abolitionists had forced them to defend slavery and, thus, they felt they had triumphed intellectually over anti-slavery forces. The reasoning was that Southerners had been forced to think so much about slavery that they had proven without a shadow of a doubt that it was the best economic and social system in the world.Perhaps Bonner's most interesting chapters on the change over time are his discussion of religion, written history, and celebrations. Much like in politics and intellectual life, Bonner shows that in the early post-Revolution years, most Southern clergy were Unionists who felt religion could broadcast the ties of the North and South to slaves to show the enslaved people the uselessness of insurrection. Furthermore, southern clergy were sure days of thanksgiving across America showed an affirmation of the American mission in both sections. However, by the 1850's southern clergy were largely alongside politicians and other advocates of secession who felt slavery was best protected out of the Union. Many religious leaders in the South viewed the North as a haven for religious radicalism and this was exemplified by abolitionist clergy. Bonner's work on written history and historical celebrations is extremely enlightening. Bonner shows us that southerners debated the legacy of the American Revolution, each side arguing they were the true defenders of said legacy. As northerners trumpeted the story of the Pilgrims, and compared it to Jamestown and the introduction of slavery to America, southerners attempted to combat this by championing southern social heterogeneity and place slaveholders and slavery within the larger flow of a heroic tradition. The work on George Washington and southern attempts to utilize his image is truly fascinating.In the mind of this reviewer, this is very little to quibble with regarding Bonner's work. Much of the work is intellectual history so it does not give us a "bottom up" look at southern nationalism, but Bonner makes attempts to rectify this with the work on political culture. The final chapters that deal with the Confederacy are nothing original, as much of Bonner's thesis in this area (the battle over centralizing the Confederate government, desperation of Confederacy by war's end) has been covered by historians such as Emory Thomas and George Rable. It is more in the earlier chapters and the change over time that Bonner makes his mark. Bonner's argument that southern nationalism worked hand-in-hand with American nationalism in the first several decades after the Revolution is well-supported and persuasive. And he adds nuance to the story by always showing that there were competing visions of what southern nationalism meant, from the beginning to Appomattox and beyond, thus distinguishing himself from some that have shown the South as homogenous. This is a very enlightening work and should be ready by all students of the antebellum South.