The Burden of Southern History. by C. Vann WoodwardReview by: C. Hugh HolmanSocial Forces, Vol. 39, No. 4 (May, 1961), p. 359Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573440 .

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LIBRARY AND WORKSHOP 359

flash-back. Then, where possible, there is a develop- ment of the interrelationship between the topic under discussion and other pertinent characteristics. The chapter on Fertility, by Wilson H. Grabill, follows a similar pattern of development.

It is the reviewer's opinion that the strength and weakness of this heavily documented book lie in the fact that it presents population in the mold of census material. This has resulted in an image of population as simply a discipline which relies on period-typed indexes. Thus the analysis and interpretation are based primarily on interrelationships between socio-economic charac- teristics gathered by the census at successive time periods for detailed geographic units. The organization of the book tends to reinforce the confounding of demography with characteristics of the population. On the other hand, this book does represent a tre- mendous effort on the part of the author to bring together all the various publications of the census during this period and compiling them in one source.

Bogue should be complimented since the volume could have easily deteriorated into just a compilation of facts. But, due to the author's mastery of the subject matter, the interpretation of these facts constitutes a meaningful addition to the field of population.

CHARLES M. GRIGG Florida State University

THE BURDEN OF SOUTHERN HISTORY. By C. Vann Woodward. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UJni- versity Press, 1960. 205 pp. $3.50.

At one place in this book of brilliant and provocative essays, Vann Woodward says, "This is no plea for the relaxation of the severe limitations of the historian's discipline, nor for his borrowing the novelist's license. But once the historian abandons an old and false analogy with the natural sciences and sees that his craft employs no special concepts nor categories nor special terminology, he will admit that he attempts to 'explain' history in the same way he explains events in ordinary life ... and with much the same language, moral and psychological." Such writing, he thinks, can give history "meaning and value and significance as events never do merely because they happen."

That statement describes very well the unique value of Vann Woodward's work. He is a historian who has aways borne with dignity and delight "the severe limitations of the historian's discipline," and his work on the history of the South in the last half of the nine- teenth century is a thoroughly documented record of new explorations and illuminating discoveries. Yet he brings to the historian's task the special qualities of imagination, of moral and psychological inquiry, which convert his discoveries from raw fact into new per- ceptions of the history of the region.

The Burden of Southern History is a collection of interpretative essays, most of them originally delivered as addresses at special occasions. They have in common Professor Woodward's informed concern with what is unique in Southern life and character, and they form an account of the Southern experience, or that portion of it which, he believes, has contributed to creating a distinctive heritage. In the essays he examines the Southerner's precarious grasp on his regional identity, the obsession which the Southern writer in this century

has had with the historical past, the process by which "John Brown's private war" slowly grew into a moral crusade, the slow growth of the idea of racial equality, a reassessment of the reconstruction period, an exami- nation of the South as moral symbol in the works of Northern novelists, a spirited defense of the populist heritage, and a statement of the "irony" of Southern history.

There is food for serious thought and matter for heated argument presented here. Certainly no one else writing about the historical South-or to my knowledge, writing about American history-brings to the subject a broader philosophical imagination or a more graceful literary style. These essays are the work of a man deeply committed to a moral view of the human spectacle and blessed with wit and grace. Indeed, irony is almost the hallmark of his thought and writing, and it sparkles on page after page. For example, in discussing how the Civil War came to be a moral crusade, he writes, "An aura of glory descended upon the common cause that sometimes lifted men out of themselves, exalted them, though it seems to have inspired civilians and noncombatants more often than soldiers .... The exuberant religiosity of the age was tapped for war propaganda and yielded riches. How otherwise could men, with no consciousness of blas- phemy, lift their voices to sing, 'As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free'?"

In this volume Professor Woodward has done a remarkably effective job of making his perceptions about the Southern past available to the lay reader, and thereby making us better known to ourselves.

C. HUGH HOLMAN University of North Carolina

A DUTCH COMMUNITY: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STRUC-

TURE AND PROCESS IN A BULB-GROWING REGION IN

THE NETHERLANDS. By I. Gadourek. Leiden, The Netherlands: H. E. Stenfert Kroese N. V., 1956. 555 pp. In many ways this is a massive study in the tradition

of Middletown and of Yankee City. It is based primarily upon data secured from lengthy, structured interviews with 404 residents of Sassenheim, a community of about 7,000 people. It describes most of the important segments of life in the community and carefully analyzes the interrelationships between a number of socio- cultural variables.

The research upon which the book is based was one of a series of projects sponsored by the Department of Mental Health of the Netherlands' Institute of Pre- ventive Medicine. Though the author was the only full-time person with the project in its entirety, he had the help of six or seven others for varying periods at different stages of the research. The general purpose was "to study the culture-pattern and the social structure and processes in a bulb-growing, indus- trializing community ... by utilizing both description and analysis." After background preparation was com- pleted in 1949-1950, the project workers were intro- duced to the community in the fall 1950. Between then and May 1951, two steps were taken. A number of relatively unstructured interviews with institutional functionaries were carried out and, on the basis of information secured in this way and from documentary

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