A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma Of The Intellectual In The Old South, 1840-1860

A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860

A Sacred Circle has been widely acclaimed as the first full treatment of the existence of a Southern reform impulse that offers a new explanation of the proslavery argument. The book demonstrates the widespread similarities between the cultural tensions that plagued North and South and documents the existence of critical thinking in a region too often considered monolithic.The ambivalent feelings of this group of men for their region, their need both to justify and to return, embody the dilemma not just of Southerners from Jefferson to Quentin Compson and C. Van Woodward but of the intellectual throughout history. Review "This is a provocative book, full of insights no brief account can adequately describe. It is written with charm and is thoroughly researched. It is a valuable contribution not only to the study of the South, the American mind, and slavery but to American letters as well."--American Historical Review"An indisputable contribution of this book is that from now on no one can doubt that there were intellectuals in the antebellum South besides George Fitzhugh. The sacred circle of the title refers to the intellectual and personal network among five antebellum southern writers. This circle consisted of George Holmes, James Hammond, Edmund Ruffin, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and William Gilmore Simms. . . . The book is valuable for showing in yet another way how slavery made the South different from the North, but only in degree rather than in kind."--Journal of Southern History"Faust brings us face to face with the minds and lives of five southern thinkers. . . . Fascinating and moving. It is a first-rate intellectual history."--Atlanta Historical Society About the Author Drew Gilpin Faust taught at the University of Pennsylvania for 25 years before becoming Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2001 She was appointed President of Harvard University in 2007. Among her other books are The Ideology of Slavery: The Proslavery Argument in the Old South and Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.