South Carolina Books

Students of Civil War history well know Sarah Morgan who wrote a diary that remains an unparalleled portrait of her time. The daughter of privilege, Sarah was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and began her diary in her late teens. By the time Union soldiers had taken over Baton Rouge she had lost both her father and brother. Sarah, along with her sister, Miriam, and her mother eventually fled to the outskirts and later to New Orleans where they remained until the war's closing days.

At one time she wrote, "Oh, how I hate to be like other women." She most certainly was not. She wrote in clear precise prose with an unflinching eye for the reasons behind battle and the horrors of war. Sarah would become the first woman to have a byline when she wrote for the Charleston News and Courier, covering such subjects as race relations, funerals, Spanish and French politics. These editorials by, of all people, a woman caused considerable comment in Charleston.

Her original diary was first published in 1913, almost immediately becoming a source for historians and students alike.

Now, with this volume from The University of Georgia Press we are fortunate to find not only the letters exchanged between Sarah and her husband, Francis Warrington Dawson but these missives are accompanied by articles Sarah wrote. Thus, we now have a complete picture of Sarah the woman as found in her original diary tracing the years of the War and then tin his volume encompassing her years following the war.

When the couple first met Dawson was a widower and owner of the Charleston News and Courier. Sarah was reluctant to marry, and the notes exchanged reveal much about each of them as their courtship continued. Of special interest are Sarah's views on the state of women at that time.

This well conceived and executed volume sheds much light on an important part of our country's history.

- Gail Cooke

This book tells the story of Dalton, Georgia, and how the textile mill led to its development. It is a very detailed look at the townspeople and their struggles throughout a century. It provides a unique and perceptive view of the South's economic and social transformation beginning during the aftermath of the Civil War and continuing with the rise of technology into the Reagan years.

Although my interest was personal because it is part of my genealogy, I still think someone unrelated would find this book very interesting, insightful and interesting. It answered many questions I had.
A must-have for anyone connected with the Crofts or related families, or anyone interested in the early settlers of SC. Very well written.

This book reminded me very much of Maeve Binchy's simialr stories. This author has the same wonderful celtic tone and can capture a very strong sense of place and character. The descriptions are wonderful. I highly recomend this book!

David is an enigmatic figure. He has stories attributed to him that are reminiscent of legendary figures from Greek mythology, yet has other stories that show him as a very flawed, very human figure. He seems loyal and disloyal, caring and selfish, naïve and manipulative - almost as if there were several personalities present. Yet through all of this complexity, the single figure of David is more prominent than almost any other human figure in the Hebrew Scriptures (for instance, David's name appears about 1080 times, compared with 772 for Moses, the next most-cited person). Moses, too, is a flawed person, but the depth of detail of David makes him in many ways a more interesting figure; his close-ness yet distance to the Divine also makes him more like the others of us ordinary human beings.

Steussy identifies four different narrative strands that give the portrait of David to us: The history from Genesis to Kings (in particular, the narrative in Samuel); the Chronicles, a parallel yet distinct history from the other; the Psalms, many attributed to David, others talking about David as God's chosen or special one, and the general sense of all the Psalms being 'of David'; and finally, snippets of David from prophetic literature. While the image of David continues to be replayed and embellished in current art and literature, Steussy confines this survey to the actual Biblical presentations of David.

Steussy devotes major attention to the first three strands of David; the largest strand being the first, the primary history set forth from Torah to Kings. She likens the first strand to being a mural realistically painted, the second strand from Chronicles as being more akin to a stained-glass window image of David, and the Psalms as being a collage portrait of David. The fourth strand is more difficult to pin down, and only one chapter is devoted to it, because the scattered references do not make up, in terms of volume, a significant addition; however, they do add, rather like spices, a flavouring to the other primary pieces. Through all the portraits, 'David stands perpetually at the point where divine power enters our world'.

Steussy also delineates the different ways of approaching the Biblical text: dogmatic, critical, and artistic. Being a professor in a liberal-academic setting, perhaps it is natural that Steussy would approach the topic primary from the scholarly-critical method. However, she does not discount the other approaches as invalid or without value, and draws in on occasion differing possibilities based on the variety of approaches available.

While this is a scholarly text, it is not part of that body of work that is 'by scholars, for scholars'. Steussy avoids jargon and discipline-specific terminology whenever possible, and when not possible, defines and explains the language she is using. Thus, this is a book accessible to any person interested in topics such as history and Biblical studies regardless of specific educational background.

Steussy does have an amazing care for attention to detail; for example, having chosen to use the text of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible as the primary text for references, she then in turn analyses and criticises the translation and word choice wherever it seems to her problematic. This kind of attention also draws in references from outside sources and cross-references in the Biblical texts to further illuminate points along the way.

Steussy has an extensive bibliography which lists many valuable resources. There are endnotes (I have a preference as a reader for footnotes, but the placement decision is often a publisher one rather than an author one), and blessedly a topical index in addition to an index of Biblical references.

This is a fascinating study of David, which would serve well for individual study, classroom assignments and Bible study groups.

Dawn Langley Simmons life story in this incredible autobiography is one full of contrasts. Born and identified as a boy and named Gordon in Britain,she eventually was able to have the necessary surgery in America to become the woman she was intended to be. As a writer Gordon emigrated to America and mixed with the rich and famous and the upper echeleons of society. He became very wealthy in his own right and from a legacy left to him. He was able to buy an historic house in Charleston and have the surgery required to become a woman. Dawn then met and married a poor black man,and faced a future of racism and abuse from the community, eventually having to leave Charleston and after many shifts becoming very poor herself and joining the black community of her husband. She gives birth to a daughter and is now a grandmother. But her husband can be described as a scoundrel,having had affairs,almost killing Dawn with his abuse and then being diagnosed with schitzophrenia. The ! fact that Dawn could be so forgiving is a testament to her strength and character. I first read about Dawn in a magazine in 1997 and spent a very long time tracking down this book,eventually getting it from Amazon.com. Reading of Dawn's British roots in Heathfield and Tunbridge Wells was so neat as all of my relatives come from that part of the world too,so the places she mentioned I was able to picture in my mind. This book is a very good story of an incredible life of unbelievable contrasts. How many people could cope with what Dawn has been through and come out such a lovely person.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney was a young woman who managed a plantation. In her day, this was unheard of! She had a head for business and agriculture. Eliza experimented with crops that brought wealth to the colonies, despite failure due to weather, insects and the jealousy of a sneaky dye maker who destroyed her crop because he didn't like working for a girl!

From seed to harvest to finished product, A Day In the Life of a Colonial Indigo Planter tells the story of indigo and the fascinating story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who earned a place in American history.

Most highly recommended!

Dr. Sullivan presents a fascinating account of an important--but often overlooked--era in the American Civil Rights movement. Days of Hope is an authoritative account of the roots of the civil rights struggle. The book is interesting, comprehensive, and impeccably sourced and researched. A must for any student of the movement.

Every now and then you luck into a beautifully produced book which changes your frame of reference. "De Leon" is as close to telling us about who we are and what made our nation as any I've read.
You don't have to be an historian or a scholar or someone with a particular interest in Mexican American history to realize that the De Leon story, in Crimm's telling, is as engaging, exciting, and moving as any part of our American story. "De Leon" offers an understanding not just of a piece of family history but of a whole landscape, storied but unfamiliar to many of us. Highly recommended!

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.
Brooks book highlights another example of how Americans, demobilizing from a foreign war against racism and tyranny, became acutely aware of their own country's inconsistencies and hypocrisies about race and democracy. This article shows how returning veterans - both black and white - organized protests against the undemocratic machine in their home state of Georgia, but struggled with the degree to which they embraced racial change. Brooks argues that it is difficult to ascertain whether World War II helped inspire change, or just reinforced the status quo in Georgia and the South.

Using both primary sources, such as interviews and newspaper articles, and secondary sources, Brooks recounts the efforts of returning veterans. She regards veteran activism as a "barometer by which to measure the war's political impact" (564) and supports her argument by detailing the opinions of veterans and describing efforts of black and white veterans groups to jointly support political campaigns. Brooks suggests that the contradictions about race, economics and social progress the veterans experienced help define the postwar period as disruptive and destabilizing.

One example of black and white Georgian veterans groups working together was when the black World War II-Veterans Association mobilized so many black voters that they ultimately gave the win to the white Citizens
Progressive League, thereby ousting a less progressive incumbent political machine. Another more direct example is the interracial American Veterans Committee, in which black and white veterans worked to obtain full GI benefits and better housing and to stop police brutality against blacks. They also worked side by side toward change by jointly supporting moderate or liberal candidates. against white supremacist candidates like Eugene Talmadge. Finally, black and white veterans jointly launched an attack on the county-unit system, which apportioned electoral votes so that it discriminated against urbanites, blacks and the working class. A joint coalition, called the Georgia Veterans for Majority Rule, challenged this practice through lawsuits and letter campaigns.

Brooks reinforces the argument of the ambiguity of World War II as catalyst or as a constrictor of racial change by examining the other side of the argument the times when progressive racial reform agendas failed. For example, she details reactionary efforts of veterans who aligned themselves with the Ku Klux Klan or the Columbians, Inc. and how their tactics prevented efforts of moderate politics. She found that the economic situation was an important element in the Ku Klux Klan's and Columbians' ability to successfully recruit white veterans. Many veterans felt entitled to some of the spoils of the reconversion efforts and became disillusioned by the realities of overcrowding and the slow economic situation of post-war Georgia. As we saw in McEnaney's article2 some white veterans fought to claim their position on the top of the economic hierarchy and became afraid of competition from blacks.

Alternatively, these economic concerns inspired other white veterans to overturn the corruption and inefficiency of incumbent regimes. They were also embarrassed by the wartime remarks of fellow servicemen from other states deriding their home state's economic depravity and corrupt politics. Therefore, they fought to change the status quo and successfully ousted the incumbent political machines. However, these white veterans were most convinced by arguments that the corruption infringed upon their economic rights, not necessarily acknowledging the infringement upon the civil rights of their fellow black veterans. These often separate, even opposing, positions of race and economics reflect the ambiguity that is inherent in the definition of progress.
Brooks further reflects this ambiguity about race in her description of James Carmichael's campaign, in which he both attacked the racial extremism of the Ku Klux Klan and advocated the county-unit system. She declares that most white veteran campaigners were forced to adopt a two-faced outlook about progress, in which they advocated for economic growth and modernization while enforcing racial status quo. She asserts that the legacy of this period is one in which racial reform and economic reform walked side by side, but that growth politics
ultimately prevailed over progressive racial politics. While Brooks paints a complex picture of post-war Georgia politics and society, her arguments were incoherent at times. Instead of arguments postulated and defended with concrete examples, she presents incidences of where policies failed and where they succeeded. For example, she discusses how the CPL's campaign for economic modernization of society defeated the
status quo, often racist, Savannah incumbent party then, in the next sentence, discusses how the status quo county:-system defeated a more progressive campaigner, Carmichael. Perhaps, however, Brook's employs these juxtaposed arguments as a scholarly technique to parallel the ambiguity about race and economics and whether World War II helped inspire change, or reinforced the status quo in Georgia.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, civil rights history.