|
|||||
|
Letters tell first-hand accounts of Southern life Letters tell first-hand accounts of Southern life"Gentlemen Merchants : A Charleston Family's Odyssey, 1828-1870"
Philip N. Racine, a professor of history at Wofford College, has taken on a vast task with the publication of "Gentlemen Merchants : A Charleston Family's Odyssey, 1828-1870"; Racine has in this one very large volume transcribed and edited countless letters between various members of the Gourdin and Young families of Charleston, South Carolina. Both families were leading scions of industry and shipping in a city that, prior to the Civil War, was one of the wealthiest and most crucial of the thirteen original colonies. Due to the sheer number of letters between various people in these families and due to family and business associations between the two, their prolonged period of communication offers a rare and comprehensive look into the actual daily situation of life for the wealthy in the south before, during, and after the Civil War. For scholars, Racine's work in collecting and editing these letters will be a boon to further research on many aspects of southern history and culture but for the lay reader his work offers something very useful also: While in most cases, we read what a historian postulates via research happened during a certain point in time, while through these letters we can read first-hand accounts of this exciting period of life in the south. No shortage of politics, allure, and intrigue is found here and the letters at times move so swimmingly from one to the next and contain such a bounty of detail that they read nearly like a novel. As the Gourdins and the Youngs were wealthy and had business interests far and wide, they tend to travel far more than we commonly would expect of people of this time period to and letters arrive back in Charleston often from New York City or even Europe. The care taken in writing letters which, in typed transcription in this book often take up a full page or more, is astounding considering these folks had only pen and ink and were often on the go anyways. In our age of email and cellphones the sense of both joy and duty in letter-writing taken by these correspondents is very impressive. Despite this old-timey feel of letter-writing, there is much business talked over in these letters and the worlds of the Gourdins and Youngs were large and full of life. Based out of Charleston, business trips to Savannah and other locales nearby were very commonplace aside from longer and more involved travel to Europe and elsewhere. The importance of Europe to trade for the south during the antebellum period cannot be overstressed and comes across clearly via these letters. Many letters are written on ships or in hotel rooms, taking up time when down-time was to be had in an era where speed was only pragmatic to a certain point. Other leitmotifs of the era are easily located in this book: the spectre of illness, with frequent questions about the health of loved ones; the fear of political strife right before the Civil War; questions of faith and endless comments on sermons and preachers. The social quality of the upperclass of the time betrays both its elite status and the state of socioeconomic flux the south was experiencing. Despite their travel, their money, and their leading roles in Charleston (itself a city built on decades of powerful families and firms being handed down from father to son), the Gourdins and Youngs faced over the course of time covered by this book a storm of challenges and problems that gnaw away at their very way of life. The resolve and courage of these people-our correspondents-in the face of an uncertain future is really a mighty force that would move even the most stubborn enemy of the Confederate view of the war to some level of empathy. No matter what they may have lost, the correspondents here place their faith in God and their primary sense of duty firstly to family, then nation . . . with the latter expectedly being the Confederate States of America. Racine's book is not short: at nearly 900 pages including notes and the index it is a hefty work of scholarship and a library's worth of letters. Racine's time and skill in transcribing these letters and his apt eye and expert background in history of this period and region have allowed him to present the letters in their writers' own voices but with notes where needed to inform the modern reader of historical conditions and possibly confusing or unknown circumstances. Having read Eliza Cope Harrison's book "Best Companions: Letters of Eliza Middleton Fisher and her Mother, Mary Hering Middleton, from Charleston, Philadelphia, and Newport, 1839-1846" I already had a fairly good impression of some of the routines of domestic and social life within Charleston's upperclass at roughly the same time period, but Racine's volume-which is longer and covers a far longer period of time with more writers-really brought in nuanced details on nearly every scope of Charleston and the south in general. While Racine's book probably is targeted foremost towards scholars of American history such as himself and to academic library collections, it is very readable and a book which once picked up is really hard to put down. As I stated before, it reads in places like a novel despite being a collection of real letters by very real people. Anyone who is interested in what life was like in the "old south" should enjoy this book and my only warning is of its length yet it is the type of work one is not going to sit in read in one sitting anyways. Mark my words though, this is a very special, unique, book that should win itself a spot in the homes of all lovers of southern history.
MIKE WALKER is a journalist and writer who lives in Gainesville, Florida. He studied architectural history at the Savannah College of Art and Design and from that experience developed a deep love of the physical and social history of the American south. He may be reached via email at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
      |
||||
