In the troubled days before the American Civil War, both Northern protectionists and Southern free trade economists saw political economy as the key to understanding the natural laws on which every republican political order should be based. They believed that individual freedom was one such law of nature and that this freedom required a market economy in which citizens could freely pursue their particular economic interests and goals.

But Northern and Southern thinkers alike feared that the pursuit of wealth in a market economy might lead to the replacement of the independent producer by the wage laborer. A worker without property is a potential rebel, and so the freedom and commerce that give birth to such a worker would seem to be incompatible with preserving the content citizenry necessary for a stable, republican political order.

Around the resolution of this dilemma revolved the great debate on the desirability of slavery in this country. Northern protectionists argued that independent labor must be protected at the same time that capitalist development is encouraged. Southern free trade economists answered that the formation of a propertyless class is inevitable; to keep the nation from anarchy and rebellion, slavery—justified by racism—must be preserved at any cost.

Battles of the economists such as these left little room for political compromise between North and South as the antebellum United States confronted the corrosive effects of capitalist development. And slavery's retardant effect on the Southern economy ultimately created a rift within the South between those who sought to make slavery more like capitalism and those who sought to make capitalism more like slavery.

In recent years American conservatism has found a new voice, a new way of picking up the political pieces left in the wake of liberal policies. But what seems innovative, Eugene Genovese shows us, may in fact have very old roots. Tracing a certain strain of conservatism to its sources in a rich southern tradition, his book introduces a revealing perspective on the politics of our day. As much a work of political and moral philosophy as one of history, The Southern Tradition is based on the intellectual journey of one of the most influential historians of the late twentieth century.To appreciate the tradition of southern conservatism, Genovese tells us, we must first understand the relation of southern thought to politics. Toward this end, he presents a historical overview that identifies the tenets, sensibilities, and attitudes of the southern-conservative world view. With these conditions in mind, he considers such political and constitutional issues as state rights, concurrent majority, and the nature and locus of political power in a constitutional republic. Of special interest are the southern-conservative critiques of equality and democracy, and of the Leviathan state in its liberal, socialist, and fascist forms. Genovese examines these critiques in light of the specific concept of property that has been central to southern social and political thought.Not only does this book illuminate a political tradition grounded in the writings of John Randolph and John C. Calhoun, but it shows how this lineage has been augmented by powerful literary figures such as Allen Tate, Lewis Simpson, and Robert Penn Warren. Genovese here reconstitutes the historical canon, re-envisions the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative tradition, and broadens the spectrum of political debate for our time.