The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century [Book Review]

In this brief, well-written narrative of the main lines of the development of national political issues in the South from 1800-1890, Robert F. Durden argues that the region passed from optimistic nationalism, often with vigorous two-party competition, in the early and middle parts of the century to pessimistic "aggrieved sectionalism" and one-party domination after Reconstruction. The white masses, he contends, inflicted the damaging transformation on themselves by gradually becoming entirely devoted to slavery and white supremacy.