Slavery, Race, and American History: Historical Conflicts, Trends, and Method, 1866-1953

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Slavery, Race, and American History: Historical Conflicts, Trends, and Method, 1866-1953. By John David Smith. (Armonk, N.Y., and London: M. E. Sharpe, c. 1999. Pp. xvi, 240. Paper, $23.95, ISBN 0-7656-0378-0; cloth, $64.95, ISBN 0-7656-0377-2.)

The fifteen essays that comprise this volume cover much the same ground as John David Smith's An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918 (Westport, Conn., 1985). In that earlier volume, the work of historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934) was the culmination of a southern-born interpretation of slavery that rested on racist assumptions about the incapacity of blacks. That interpretation also …