Table Of ContentIntellectual Life and the
American South, 1810–1860
Michael O’Brien
foreword by daniel walker howe
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
Intellectual Life and the
American South, 1810–1860
an abridged edition of
Conjectures of Order
∫ 2010 Michael O’Brien
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and set in Whitman and Clarendon by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a
member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Brien, Michael, 1948 Apr. 13–
Intellectual life and the American South, 1810–1860 : an abridged edition of
Conjectures of order / Michael O’Brien ; foreword by Daniel Walker Howe. — [Abridged ed.]
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3400-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Southern States—Intellectual life. 2. Intellectuals—Southern States—History—19th
century. 3. Southern States—Social conditions—19th century. 4. Southern States—
Relations—Europe. 5. Europe—Relations—Southern States. I. O’Brien, Michael, 1948 Apr.
13– Conjectures of order. II. Title.
f213.o27 2010
975%.03—dc22
2009046322
14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword vii Preface ix
Introduction The Position and Course of the South 1
1
The Softened Echo of the World 19
2
All the Tribes, All the Productions of Nature 53
3
A Volley of Words 97
4
The Shape of a History 141
5
Pride and Power 191
6
Philosophy and Faith 259
Epilogue Cool Brains 315
Notes 337 Index 361
This page intentionally left blank
Foreword
Michael O’Brien’s Conjectures of Order, his comprehensive intellectual history
of the Old South, is a triumph of humane letters. The University of North
Carolina Press originally published it in two large volumes. The present
abridgment makes this distinguished work available to students and the
general literate curious public.
In this edition, Michael O’Brien still displays the wide learning, acute
intelligence, and refined sensibility that so impressed his fellow scholars.
Professor O’Brien is a British academic (at Jesus College of Cambridge Uni-
versity) who has spent twenty-five years in the United States and obtained a
secure familiarity with American history and habits, particularly those of the
Southern states. Here he sets the finest thinkers of the antebellum South into
a broad context. He writes with assurance, subtlety, and grace. Over and over
again, he goes back to the original primary sources and reconceives his
subjects with originality. A reader will find O’Brien’s presentations fresh and
imaginative.
Professor O’Brien shows us the Old South as an intellectually vibrant and
modern society. He succeeds completely in redeeming the antebellum South
from hostile accusations that it was a philistine cultural desert. He demon-
strates that, on the contrary, its intellectual life was cosmopolitan and sensi-
tive. And he accomplishes this feat without for a minute trying to defend the
cavalier or proslavery legends. Instead he reveals a Southern culture that was
lively, diverse, and in touch with the rest of the modern world.
O’Brien grounds his examination of Southern intellectual history in social
reality, including an unshrinking recognition of the pervasive consequences
of slavery. He is interested in the particular as much as the general, in the
lived biographical experiences of individuals. The variety of characters and
ideas in the book is truly remarkable. Thomas Je√erson and Edgar Allen Poe;
expatriate radicals like Frederick Douglass and the Grimké sisters; brilliant,
staunch conservatives like George Fitzhugh and Louisa McCord—all are
treated with respect and insight. Thomas Dew, leading social scientist and
historian, gets careful attention; so do the profound political reflections of
John Taylor and John C. Calhoun; so do the autobiographical narratives of
escaped slaves. O’Brien is as interested in the forms of Southern cultural life
as he is in describing its intellectual content. Accordingly, he discusses con-
versation, correspondence, diaries, bookselling, libraries, and periodicals.
Michael O’Brien is leading a rebirth of American intellectual history after
several decades in which few historians addressed the subject. His work bears
on many aspects of American and Southern Studies, including literature, reli-
gion, politics, philosophy, society, gender, and race. He writes in a style com-
plex and elegant yet lucid. It may take some getting used to, but readers will
find it well worth the e√ort. O’Brien provides reflective Southerners of the
present day—women as well as men, black as well as white—with an intellec-
tual heritage they can look upon not only with sympathy but also with pride.
daniel walker howe
October 2009
viii foreword
Preface
In 2004 the University of North Carolina Press published Conjectures of
Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860. It was in two
volumes, divided into an introduction, six books, and an epilogue, and fur-
ther subdivided into twenty-one chapters; there was a long bibliography of
manuscript and printed sources; and in total, with the index, there were
1,382 pages. I was persuaded such voluminousness was necessary because of
the breadth of the subject matter. Even critics agreed and gave evidence of
having waded through everything, or almost everything. How readers coped
is hard to say, though one presumes most browsed as their interests dictated.
By Victorian standards, the book was laconically brief; by contemporary
ones, inexcusably discursive. Even in 2004, it was gently suggested that a
shorter version might be advisable. If the book was to have a wider reader-
ship, an abridgment was necessary.
To accomplish this task, I adopted a few elementary guidelines. First, it
seemed undesirable to revisit the book’s arguments and update them, partly
because I have not kept up with recent Southern scholarship, and instead I
ought to content myself with making the original text more succinct. Second,
the structure would remain intact and its elements would, as it were, be
miniaturized: books would be turned into chapters, chapters into sections,
sections into paragraphs. Third, the scholarly apparatus would be drastically
reduced, upon the reasoning that the retention of the old structure would
make it easy for curious readers to refer to the original, if they wished to. So
the bibliography has disappeared and the annotation now only cites direct
quotations. Fourth, errors would be corrected and passages, if too long or too
opaque, rewritten.
I cannot recommend the experience of abridging one’s own work. An
author is forced to reexamine prose with minute care and I, at least, ended up
with the bleak conviction that I was once incapable of writing a competent
sentence, fashioning an adequate footnote, or making a clear argument. On
the other hand, there is an interest in observing how abridgment changes a
book. In this instance, subplots had to be eliminated, swathes of evidence
abandoned, quotations deleted or abridged, minor characters omitted, and
