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The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston. By Maurie D. McInnis. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. xii, 395. $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-2951-X.)
To understand the supreme self-assurance of Charlestonians on the eve of secession, contends Maurie D. McInnis in her new book, one only needs to look at the material culture of the city. She sets out to scrutinize its architectural landscape and visual artifacts to show how they were translated into class distinctions and how they affected the integrally connected lives of masters and slaves. The result is a well-conceptualized and well-documented, consistently focused, and lucidly written study, the virtue of which rests on its sound analysis as much as on the accompanying treasury of captivating archival iconography.
The first two chapters introduce the city's uniqueness: its highly polarized and hierarchical social structure extending from a cosmopolitan planter aristocracy of wealth and taste to a large population of laboring slaves; the regularity of...