Reviews
"This handsomely designed and printed book deserves wide circulation and readership. The book testifies to the justice of giving the antebellum southern an 'uninterrupted moment in the court of historical opinion.' O'Brien has called the court to order and presented an argument. One hopes other historians will do the same."
—Journal of the Early Republic
Description
From the pages of forgotten journals and literary magazines Michael O’Brien assembles fourteen pieces that effectively challenge the long-prevailing notion that the mind of the Old South was superficial, unintellectual, and obsessed with race and slavery. In this book are discourses on subjects ranging from English empirical thought to neoclassical aesthetics, from the enfranchisement of women to transcendental theology, from the works of Hawthorne and Emerson to the social system of Virginia.