Content area
Full Text
Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South. By Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. [xviii], 232. Paper, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-107-60502-2; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-107-01164-9.)
The central claim of Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South will surprise few historians who are familiar with the late Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese 's scholarship. While slaveholders' claims were self-serving and self-deceiving, the book cogently argues that "slaveholders said what they meant and meant what they said" (p. 1). Slaveholders genuinely believed slavery was a paternalistic system of mutual obligations. They also, despite their reliance on violence, defined paternalism as benevolent and thought slavery was an admirable social system serving the moral, spiritual, and physical needs of slaves and masters. Adeptly tracing the psychological world of slave owners, the authors show how slaveholders constructed images of themselves as virtuous, compassionate, and humane - and demonstrate just how thoroughly owners believed these images to be true.
The book begins by exploring interconnected...