review of s&w governor
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(as of Jan 05, 2025 14:32:14 UTC - Details)
Through the life of Benjamin Ryan Tillman (1847-1918), South Carolina's self-styled agrarian rebel, this book traces the history of white male supremacy and its discontents from the era of plantation slavery to the age of Jim Crow.
As an anti-Reconstruction guerrilla, Democratic activist, South Carolina governor, and U.S. senator, Tillman offered a vision of reform that was proudly white supremacist. In the name of white male militance, productivity, and solidarity, he justified lynching and disfranchised most of his state's black voters. His arguments and accomplishments rested on the premise that only productive and virtuous white men should govern and that federal power could never be trusted. Over the course of his career, Tillman faced down opponents ranging from agrarian radicals to aristocratic conservatives, from woman suffragists to black Republicans. His vision and his voice shaped the understandings of millions and helped create the violent, repressive world of the Jim Crow South.
Friend and foe alike--and generations of historians--interpreted Tillman's physical and rhetorical violence in defense of white supremacy as a matter of racial and gender instinct. This book instead reveals that Tillman's white supremacy was a political program and social argument whose legacies continue to shape American life.
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Pr (April 24, 2000)
Language : English
Paperback : 422 pages
ISBN-10 : 0807848395
ISBN-13 : 978-0807848395
Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
Reviewer: slowwalker
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Quick service
Review: Good book. Used and in good shape.
Reviewer: Kenneth B.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: this book will be an excellent choice!
Review: This book was also in my library and was misplaced. If you are inquisitive about SC historians, this book will be an excellent choice!
Reviewer: Ricky Hunter
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Biography of an Idea
Review: Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy by Stephen Kantrowitz is a well written and well researched voyage through an ugly chapter in American history that still reverberates strongly throughout the entire culture. The selection of Ben Tillman as the focus point through which to examine the victory of white supremacy in the South after Reconstruction is brilliant and frighteninly effective. This book is not so much the biography of Ben Tillman but really the biography of white supremacy as a political idea and ideal. This book captures all of the evil idealism, political pragmatism, the unique blend of bomblast and subtlety, and, especially, the terror and violence used by Ben Tillman and his ilk to secure their goals of making the political system of South Carolina all white and all Democrat. It is a wonderful book of an ugly time that is important, unfortunately, to understanding our own time. Well done.
Reviewer: Harry Needleman
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Slow Dull
Review: I could only get through the first 125 pages. It reads like the authorâs dissertation was revised for publication.
Reviewer: Edward Cowan
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Ben Tillman by Stephen Kantrowitz:Revealing But Too Long
Review: Professor Kantrowitz, a professional historian, has written a book that is revealing of the man and the times but too long and detailed for the nonprofessional reader of history. He has mined old newspapers from South Carolina and other documents energetically--and it would appear that every one of his index cards, so to speak, has been carried over into the text. Consequently, there is more detail than this reader needed or could possibly absorb. This failing is compounded by the author's inadequate treatment of Tillman's life. Milestone personal and family events are mentioned in a sentence, with no indication that the author is interested in Tillman the person--although, to his credit, he does on several occasions remind us that Tillman was devoted to his wife and wrote her loving, and playful, letters. But Tillman's relations with his children are not covered adequately. Nor do we learn much about his nonpolitical relationships with friends, relatives and neighbors. In other words, Professor Kantrowitz has scanted the biographical aspects of his book in favor of doctrinal analsyis. He has given his readers too many excerpts from Tillman's speeches, letters and interviews--primarily on how he felt about the place of Negroes in a white-dominated society. Kantrowitz shows that Tillman took a hostile view towards Negroes, as African Americans were called (and worse) in the 19th Century, and yet he and other farmers needed them as low-wage laborers. His racism and support of violence, part of his calculated appeal to white "producers," are well established early on. But the point is made over and over. Tip to readers: Kantrowitz, a disciplined writer in some respects, introduces paragraphs with topic sentences. Very often the supporting detail that follows can be skimmed or skipped because the general point already has been made.