Review
"In Becoming Southern Christopher Morris has produced an excellent example of the `new local history.'...he inevitably engages many historiographical issues that have dominated studies of the South for the past thirty years....this book is full of creative insights and manages to synthesize a variety of parts into a convincing portrait of a society and its people in the midst of change.--Georgia Historical Quarterly
"This is a noteworthy book."--Journal of American History
"This thoughtfull, well-written study doubtless will be widely read and deservedly influential."--American Historical Review
"Morris's research is prodigious, his presentation captivating."--New Orleans Review
"This is a fascinating and illuminating book."--Canadian Journal of History
Product Description
Mississippi, perhaps more than any other state, epitomized the Old
South and all it stood for. Yet, at one time, this area had more in
common with newly settled northwest territories than it did with older
southeastern plantation districts. This book takes a close look at a
"typical" Southern community, and traces its long process of economic,
social, and cultural evolution. Focusing on Jefferson Davis's Warren
County, Morris shows the transformation of a loosely knit Western
community of pioneer homesteaders into a distinctly Southern society.
This region was first settled by farmers and herders; by the turn of the
nineteenth century, the wealthiest residents began to acquire slaves
and to plant cotton, hastening the demise of the pioneer economy.
Gradually, farmers began producing for the market, which drew them out
of their neighborhoods and broke down local patterns of cooperation.
Individuals learned to rely on extended kin-networks as a means of
acquiring land and slaves, giving tremendous power to older men with
legal control over family property. Relations between masters and
slaves, husbands and wives, and planters and yeoman farmers changed with
the emergence of the traditional patriarchy of the Old South; this
transformation created the "Southern" society that Warren County's white
residents defended in the Civil War. Drawing on wills, deeds, and court
records, as well as manuscript materials, Morris presents a sensitive
and nuanced portrait of the interaction between ideology and material
conditions, challenging accepted notions of what we have come to
understand as Southern culture.