Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/154

 140 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The Lower South. By WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN. New York : The Macmillan Co. Pp. 271

WHAT might be called the sociological aspect of American history finds a good illustration in the title essay of The Lower South, by William Garrott Brown. Several of the five essays have appeared in different periodicals, where they called attention to one of the few unprejudiced students of past and present conditions in the South. In both his essays and lectures Mr. Brown has shown an appreciation of the tragedy of defeated ambitions and misplaced hopes, but he has never attempted to condone a fault or to explain away a mistake. Contrary to the expectation aroused by the title, his " lower " South is not so much a relative social rank as a geographical classification. He shows how the more southern or Gulf states, through the cultivation of cotton, gradually superseded Virginia in the leadership of the South. He finds in Yancy, McDuffie, Soule, and Toombs the successors of Wash- ington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe ; but leaders whose prosperity made them arrogant and whose fear lest they be deprived of the source of their wealth made them resort to threats. The writer does not hesitate to show the faults of this oligarchy, nor does he spare the northern " doughface " who bowed down to them to curry political favor. This one thought that the South did not change its opinion concerning the desirability of slaveholding between the time of Thomas Jefferson and that of Jefferson Davis, but that the leadership shifted and brought new views this is alone worth the volume. The four additional essays are of minor merit. A careful study of the resources of the Confederacy is the most valuable and a sophomoric eulogy on Hobson of the least merit.

EDWIN E. SPARKS.