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The fire-eaters (1992)

av Eric H. Walther

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433581,229 (3.33)Ingen/inga
"In the early 1850s, northerners and southerners alike used the term fire-eater to describe anyone whose views were clearly outside the political mainstream. Eventually, though, the word came to be most closely identified with those southerners who were staunch and unyielding advocates of secession. In this broadly researched and illuminating study, Eric H. Walther examines the lives of nine of the most prominent fire-eaters: Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, William Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D. B. De Bow, Edmund Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles." "Walther paints skillful portraits of his subjects, analyzing their backgrounds, personalities, and contributions to the movement for disunion. Although they shared the common goal of southern independence, Walther shows that in many respects the fire-eaters differed markedly from one another. It was their very diversity, he maintains, that enabled them to appeal to such a wide spectrum of southern opinion and thereby rally support for secession." "In his exploration of the role of the fire-eaters in the secession movement, Walther touches upon a number of perennial themes in southern history, including the appeal of proslavery thought and southern expansionism, the place of education and industrialization in antebellum southern society, the significance of oratory in southern culture, and the nature of southern nationalism. He also describes the fire-eaters' activities on behalf of the Confederacy and traces the course of their lives after the war." "The Fire-Eaters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Secession movement and the context in which it developed. There is no other study available that treats these men as a group and that delineates their manifold differences as well as their similarities. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources, spoke in many voices, and responded to a number of regional problems, needs, and aspirations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (mer)
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A collective biography of nine of the men who devoted themselves to advocating southern secession before the Civil War. ( )
  antiquary | Jun 11, 2014 |
This book is a collective biography of nine 19th-century intellectuals, activists, and other public figures who were early advocates for secession by the southern slave states from the USA.

Not all southern secessionists had the same motives or were persuaded by the same factors. A majority of white southerners did not commit themselves to southern independence until after Abraham Lincoln's election as president in November 1860, perhaps not until after delegates to a special convention in South Carolina had already voted to secede.

Before then, the political gospel of secession had been proclaimed only by a radical minority dismissively called "fire-eaters" for their overheated rhetoric of doom and danger. This biographical study of nine early secessionists is probably the best way to approach this incohesive group, whose fringe opinions suddenly occupied the southern mainstream during the crisis of 1860.

The fire-eaters had few things in common beside their shared conviction that the slave South could only survive as an independent republic. They imagined that an independent South would cut its ties to the alien North and abandon the corrupt party system that southerners had relied on to protect their slave society. Most of the fire-eaters also rejected democracy in favor of an elite republicanism, believing that government, much like a plantation, was best managed by the "best" men.

Walther's nine subjects include such well known fire-eaters as William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, and Virginian Edmund Ruffin. Less well known is Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, the William and Mary law professor who pseudonymously published a novel, The Partisan Leader, that imagined the formation of a Southern Confederacy by 1849. Then there is the former industrial promoter and U.S. Census official James D.B. DeBow, whose widely read De Bow's Review became a forum for openly secessionist writing by 1857.

In 1860, the white South panicked over the rise of the northern-based Republican Party, which they incorrectly linked to radical abolitionism. Ambitious young planters whose fortunes were tied to slavery began to see the fire-eaters as "prophetic, conservative, and wise instead of irresponsible, radical, and rash." By April 1861 the fire-eaters had attained their goal, an independent southern confederacy committed to chattel slavery. Yet most of them, radicals to the core, quickly turned against the Confederate administration of Jefferson Davis.

The fire-eaters led the way to secession, but they never could have achieved it on their own. It was a critical mass of young cotton planters who, with greater political discipline than the fire-eaters, organized and dominated secession conventions that also sent secessionist missionaries into the more reluctant slave states. The majority of white southerners came late to secessionist views, motivated by growing estrangement from the North and fears, exacerbated by propaganda, of the consequences of abolition. As this majority formed, the fire-eaters themselves quickly fell back toward the fringe of what was now Confederate politics.

According to the fire-eater and mathematics professor William Porcher Miles, "the world is governed by 'abstractions.'" Political ideals, honor, even scientific principles rest mainly upon immaterial grounds, Miles insisted, yet they are no less powerful for being unprovable. The abstraction that moved the fire-eaters, and ultimately a majority of white southerners, was the defense and expansion of chattel slavery, despite the world's growing consensus that it was morally indefensible. As De Bow insisted to his readers, "civilization itself may depend upon the continual servitude of the blacks in America." It's not hard to see why present-day white southerners (including this writer) have trouble facing up to the violently racist vision that guided a critical mass of their radicalized ancestors to secede and make war.
  Muscogulus | Oct 5, 2013 |
Almond returns to some familiar themes--the mystery and the pain of life--in a dramatic story drawn from both global and personal events. It is 1962, and the world is on the brink of nuclear destruction. For Bobby Burns, the waste and ruin is even closer to home: his father is seriously ill, and a cruel schoolmaster is forcing Bobby to take a stand that may destroy his educational chances. As in all of Almond's books, everyday detail mingles with the grotesque. The bizarre here comes in the form of McNulty, a fire-eater and strongman who also pushes sharp objects through his flesh--an explicit demonstration of pain mirrored by Bobby's sticking pins in his hands as a sacrifice to keep his father healthy. For anyone who loves words, Almond's books are a pleasure. But this time the Newcastle accent used by most of the characters may be difficult to grasp initially, and though Almond brings together the strands of his story, some of his many characters are not well integrated. Whatever the book's flaws, though, Almond's writing is so imaginative and layered that turning the pages is always meaningful.
(Ilene Cooper (Booklist, Mar. 15, 2004 (Vol. 100, No. 14))
WON Boston Globe--Horn Book Awards Winner 2004 Fiction and Poetry United States
Guardian Award for Children's Fiction Shortlist 2003 United Kingdom
Nestle Smarties Book Prize Gold Winner 2003 Ages 9-11 United Kingdom
  mrg06m | Oct 14, 2007 |
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"In the early 1850s, northerners and southerners alike used the term fire-eater to describe anyone whose views were clearly outside the political mainstream. Eventually, though, the word came to be most closely identified with those southerners who were staunch and unyielding advocates of secession. In this broadly researched and illuminating study, Eric H. Walther examines the lives of nine of the most prominent fire-eaters: Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, William Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D. B. De Bow, Edmund Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles." "Walther paints skillful portraits of his subjects, analyzing their backgrounds, personalities, and contributions to the movement for disunion. Although they shared the common goal of southern independence, Walther shows that in many respects the fire-eaters differed markedly from one another. It was their very diversity, he maintains, that enabled them to appeal to such a wide spectrum of southern opinion and thereby rally support for secession." "In his exploration of the role of the fire-eaters in the secession movement, Walther touches upon a number of perennial themes in southern history, including the appeal of proslavery thought and southern expansionism, the place of education and industrialization in antebellum southern society, the significance of oratory in southern culture, and the nature of southern nationalism. He also describes the fire-eaters' activities on behalf of the Confederacy and traces the course of their lives after the war." "The Fire-Eaters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Secession movement and the context in which it developed. There is no other study available that treats these men as a group and that delineates their manifold differences as well as their similarities. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources, spoke in many voices, and responded to a number of regional problems, needs, and aspirations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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