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Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation. By John Majewski. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvi, 240 pp. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3251-6.)
John Majewski s fine study, Modernizing a Shve Economy, provides a thoughtful overview of recent historical studies that detail modern elements in the South before and during the Civil War. More important, Majewski argues - based on an impressive statistical analysis of cultivation practices across the South and a close reading of what he describes as "sourhern extremist" literature - that far from being states' rights republicans, many secessionists "envisioned industrial expansion, economic independence, and government activism as essential features of the Confederacy" (p. 3). Once free of the constraints that these southerners believed the North had imposed on their region and with the assistance of a new government,...