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Frank Lawrence Owsley
Frank Lawrence Owsley (January 20, 1890 – October 21, 1956) was an American historian who taught at Vanderbilt University for most of his career, where he specialized in Southern history and was a member of the Southern Agrarians. He is notorious for his essay "The Irrepressible Conflict" (1930) in which he lamented the economic loss of slavery for the defeated Confederacy and of the "half savage blacks" that had been freed. He is also known for his study of Confederate diplomacy based on the idea of "King Cotton" and especially his quantitative social history of the middling "plain people" of the Old South.
Born on his grandparents' farm near Montgomery, Alabama, Owsley graduated from the Fifth District Agricultural School (now Wetumpka High School) in Wetumpka. He then completed two degrees at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), a Bachelor of Science in 1911 and Master of Arts in 1912. From 1912 to 1919, Owsley worked as a teacher at public schools and the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. Owsley also began graduate studies in history at the University of Chicago under Professor William E. Dodd, completing a second master's degree in 1917 and doctorate in 1924. "Although he appreciated Dodd as a teacher and shared with him an intense enthusiasm for southern history, Owsley resented his mentor’s attacks upon the South’s antebellum aristocracy," wrote Fred Arthur Bailey for the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
From 1919 to 1920, Owsley taught history at Birmingham-Southern College. In 1920, Owsley married Harriet Chappell; they met at Birmingham-Southern.
Owsley argued in his dissertation State Rights in the Confederacy (1925) that the Confederacy "died of states' rights". Owsley held that during the Civil War, key Southern governors resisted the appeals of the Confederate government for soldiers. His book King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (1931) is the basic study of Confederate diplomacy. It emphasizes that Southerners before the war had a profound belief in the power of King Cotton to rule the industrial economy, so that Britain and France would enter the war on behalf of the Confederacy to get that cotton. The belief was not based on knowledge of Europe and failed in practice.[citation needed]
As an active member of the Southern Agrarians group based in Nashville, Owsley contributed "The Irrepressible Conflict" to the manifesto I'll Take My Stand (1930). In this work, he described "half-savage blacks . . . some of whom could still remember the taste of human flesh and the bulk of them hardly three generations removed from cannibalism." He lashed out at the North for what he alleged were attempts to dominate the South spiritually and economically. In "Scottsboro, the Third Crusade: The Sequel to Abolition and Reconstruction" (the American Review [1933]: 257–85), he criticized northern race reformers as the "grandchildren of abolitionists and reconstructionists." He announced that the South was white man's country and that blacks must accommodate that reality. Serving as president of the Southern Historical Association in 1940, Owsley castigated the North for assuming its people and thinking represented the entire nation, and for violating what he called "the comity of section".
Owsley agreed with the other Southern Agrarians of the 1930s in espousing values which they saw being overtaken by the industrialism and modernism that had begun to influence the South. According to Owsley, the position of the South vis-à-vis the North was created not by slavery, the dominance of cotton and agriculture, or states' rights, but by the two regions' misunderstanding of each other.
After 1940, Frank and Harriet Owsley pioneered what came to be called the "new social history". They studied the historical demography of the South and social mobility and produced a history called Plain Folk of the Old South (1949). Historian Vernon Burton described it as "one of the most influential works on Southern history ever written." The Owsleys culled data from federal census returns, tax and trial records, and local government documents and wills. In Plain Folk, they argued that Southern society was not dominated by planter aristocrats, but that yeoman farmers played a significant role. The religion, language, and culture of white common people created a democratic "plain folk" society, Owsley argued.
Plain Folk of the Old South was an answer to liberal historians' emphasis on the dominance of the planter class's social and political control of the South. Owsley regarded the future of American civilization as dependent on the survival of southern regionalism and agrarian values. The book depicts a complex social structure in the South, one featuring a large middle class of yeoman farmers and not just wealthy planters and poor whites. He argues that the South was devoted to republican values generally and was not locked into race and slavery. Owsley believed the Civil War's causes were rooted in both North and South.
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Frank Lawrence Owsley
Frank Lawrence Owsley (January 20, 1890 – October 21, 1956) was an American historian who taught at Vanderbilt University for most of his career, where he specialized in Southern history and was a member of the Southern Agrarians. He is notorious for his essay "The Irrepressible Conflict" (1930) in which he lamented the economic loss of slavery for the defeated Confederacy and of the "half savage blacks" that had been freed. He is also known for his study of Confederate diplomacy based on the idea of "King Cotton" and especially his quantitative social history of the middling "plain people" of the Old South.
Born on his grandparents' farm near Montgomery, Alabama, Owsley graduated from the Fifth District Agricultural School (now Wetumpka High School) in Wetumpka. He then completed two degrees at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), a Bachelor of Science in 1911 and Master of Arts in 1912. From 1912 to 1919, Owsley worked as a teacher at public schools and the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. Owsley also began graduate studies in history at the University of Chicago under Professor William E. Dodd, completing a second master's degree in 1917 and doctorate in 1924. "Although he appreciated Dodd as a teacher and shared with him an intense enthusiasm for southern history, Owsley resented his mentor’s attacks upon the South’s antebellum aristocracy," wrote Fred Arthur Bailey for the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
From 1919 to 1920, Owsley taught history at Birmingham-Southern College. In 1920, Owsley married Harriet Chappell; they met at Birmingham-Southern.
Owsley argued in his dissertation State Rights in the Confederacy (1925) that the Confederacy "died of states' rights". Owsley held that during the Civil War, key Southern governors resisted the appeals of the Confederate government for soldiers. His book King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (1931) is the basic study of Confederate diplomacy. It emphasizes that Southerners before the war had a profound belief in the power of King Cotton to rule the industrial economy, so that Britain and France would enter the war on behalf of the Confederacy to get that cotton. The belief was not based on knowledge of Europe and failed in practice.[citation needed]
As an active member of the Southern Agrarians group based in Nashville, Owsley contributed "The Irrepressible Conflict" to the manifesto I'll Take My Stand (1930). In this work, he described "half-savage blacks . . . some of whom could still remember the taste of human flesh and the bulk of them hardly three generations removed from cannibalism." He lashed out at the North for what he alleged were attempts to dominate the South spiritually and economically. In "Scottsboro, the Third Crusade: The Sequel to Abolition and Reconstruction" (the American Review [1933]: 257–85), he criticized northern race reformers as the "grandchildren of abolitionists and reconstructionists." He announced that the South was white man's country and that blacks must accommodate that reality. Serving as president of the Southern Historical Association in 1940, Owsley castigated the North for assuming its people and thinking represented the entire nation, and for violating what he called "the comity of section".
Owsley agreed with the other Southern Agrarians of the 1930s in espousing values which they saw being overtaken by the industrialism and modernism that had begun to influence the South. According to Owsley, the position of the South vis-à-vis the North was created not by slavery, the dominance of cotton and agriculture, or states' rights, but by the two regions' misunderstanding of each other.
After 1940, Frank and Harriet Owsley pioneered what came to be called the "new social history". They studied the historical demography of the South and social mobility and produced a history called Plain Folk of the Old South (1949). Historian Vernon Burton described it as "one of the most influential works on Southern history ever written." The Owsleys culled data from federal census returns, tax and trial records, and local government documents and wills. In Plain Folk, they argued that Southern society was not dominated by planter aristocrats, but that yeoman farmers played a significant role. The religion, language, and culture of white common people created a democratic "plain folk" society, Owsley argued.
Plain Folk of the Old South was an answer to liberal historians' emphasis on the dominance of the planter class's social and political control of the South. Owsley regarded the future of American civilization as dependent on the survival of southern regionalism and agrarian values. The book depicts a complex social structure in the South, one featuring a large middle class of yeoman farmers and not just wealthy planters and poor whites. He argues that the South was devoted to republican values generally and was not locked into race and slavery. Owsley believed the Civil War's causes were rooted in both North and South.