| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 237 words from this article are provided below; about 560 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Eugene D. Genovese. A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures, number 41.) Athens: University of Georgia Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 180. $24.95.

Eugene D. Genovese provides an intriguing view of the ways in which leading southern churchmen and their followers sought to address the most pressing challenges to slavery: those posed, first, by abolition and, subsequently, by the Civil War. In the process, he gives historians of the pro- and antislavery causes much to think about. 1

Growing out of the Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures, this book emphasizes the extent to which religious proslavery arguments encompassed both firm premises and powerful ambiguities. As Genovese shows, all of slavery's most skillful theological defenders were convinced of the rightness of slavery, of its centrality to southern society and institutions, and of its superiority to the antagonistic, competitive world of free market capitalism. Claiming, moreover, strong ideals of stewardship, all stressed how God had given them slavery to bring a benighted African race to civilization and to faith. Finally, all shared in complex notions of white supremacy, rejecting the more radical notions of mid-nineteenth-century scientific racism on religious grounds, but based no less on what Genovese describes as a "persistent fear of racial equality" (p. 98) that influenced much of what they thought and did. . . .

There are about 560 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.