| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

William E. Ellis. Robert Worth Bingham and the Southern Mystique: From the Old South to the New South and Beyond. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 1997. Pp. x, 258. $24.00.

Since the sale of the Bingham newspapers in 1986, four largely anti-Bingham books have appeared relating the story of the Binghams of Louisville, a family sometimes viewed in power, prestige, and scandal as the southern Kennedys. This book by William E. Ellis is the first treatment of the family patriarch by a working historian. Based on manuscripts, newspaper files, interviews, and current scholarship, Ellis's study is a judicious summary of Bingham's public career spanning the early progressive years until his death in 1937 while serving as ambassador to the Court of St. James. 1

The son of a Confederate veteran and Klansman, Robert Worth Bingham grew up in a New South environment structured more by "Presbyterian industriousness, self-assurance, and morality" (p. 3) than by devotion to the Lost Cause. Educated at his father's progressive private school in piedmont North Carolina, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Virginia law school, Bingham married a well-to-do Louisville socialite and soon joined an elite group of professional men rising in Louisville. As an aspiring politician, interim mayor of Louisville, and state judge on the court of appeals, Bingham placed himself in the vanguard of progressivism, waging battles for the public service concept of the state and against the liquor interests, bossism, and corrupt election practices. Bingham's principled political views and maverick tendency in local and state politics created powerful enemies and brought a succession of defeats. After 1917, he never again sought elective office. . . .

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