Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781107605022)

Slaveholders were preoccupied with presenting slavery as a benign, paternalistic institution in which the planter took care of his family, and slaves were content with their fate. In this book, Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese discuss how slaveholders perpetuated and rationalized this romanticized version of life on the plantation. Slaveholders' paternalism had little to do with ostensible benevolence, kindness, and good cheer. It grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation. At the same time, this book also advocates the examination of masters' relations with white plantation laborers and servants - a largely unstudied subject. Southerners drew on the work of British and European socialists to conclude that all labor, white and black, suffered de facto slavery, and they championed the South's "Christian slavery" as the most humane and compassionate of social systems, ancient and modern.

Author: Eugene D. Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
ISBN-10: 1107605024
ISBN-13: 9781107605022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/24/2011
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2012