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The fall of the Confederacy drowned the hopes of southern conser–
vatives for the construction of a viable noncapitalist social order,
much as the disintegration of the Soviet Union - all pretenses and
wishful thinking aside - has drowned the hopes of socialists. The cri–
tique of capitalism has lead southern conservatives to the impasse in
which the Left now finds itself
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"World-historic events," Genovese adds, "compel a reassessment of
first principles as well as political and social principles." But if such a re–
assessment must realistically begin with the admission of the failure of the
critique of capitalism by both the American left and right, implying as it
does the extinction of hope in the creation of a better world by either
side, what motive will generate the reassessment? In the last chapter of
The Southern Tradition
("Property and Power"), Genovese prophetically
sees the motive arising out of faith in the creative use of historical expe–
rience, envisioning an extension of the republican principles of Southern
conservatism in the creation of "a constitutional arrangement that pro–
tects private interests, including the right to inherit property, while it
respects the ultimate power of the people, acting collectively, to establish
proper limits on individual action." But does not Genovese qualify this
prophetic hope by the text he cites for his faith in the conservative use
of historical experience? This consists of a few lines Robert E. Lee set
down not long before his death: "Providence is so slow . . . the life of
humanity is so long, and that of the individual so brief, that we often see
only the ebb of the advancing wave, and are thus discouraged. It is
history that teaches us to hope." This was the final admonition from the
leader of a "courageous, God-fearing, honorable people," who, as
Genovese describes them in the Preface to
The Southern Tradition,
"rendered themselves complicit in slavery, segregation, and racism and
ended up in defeat and degradation." It is "wrong," Genovese
admonishes, "to obscure the genuinely tragic dimension of southern
history." When he appeals to General Lee in the final moment of the
drama of the quarrel with himself he records in
The Southern Tradition,
one has the feeling that Genovese is putting on the record his
recognition that it would also be wrong to obscure the possibility that
the history of a twentieth-century American historian who has dedicated
himself both to writing the history of the American South and support–
ing the world-historic "struggle to restructure our social relations" may
have its own tragic dimension.
LEWIS P. SIMPSON
