Va-Hist:

This review of Dr. Gregg Kimball's relatively new book, "American City,
Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond," is circulating
on H-Net's electronic discussion lists and will be of interst to our
community of Virginia historians. I will also post Dr. Kimball's response to
this review. Please respect the letter and the spirit of the copyright
notice at the end of the review and of the response.

After you read this review, you will understand why I am delighted to have
the office next door to Dr. Kimball's.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]

Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us

-----Original Message-----
From: H-South Review Editor Ian Binnington [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 08 May, 2002 7:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: H-South Review: Murray on Kimball, _American City, Southern
Place_


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (May, 2002)

Gregg D. Kimball. _American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of
Antebellum Richmond_.  Athens & London: University of Georgia Press,
2000.  xxv + 262 pp.  Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and
index.  (cloth) ISBN 0-8203-2234-2

Reviewed for H-South by Gail S. Murray ([log in to unmask]), Department of
History, Rhodes College.

When the Title Is the Thesis

A book or essay title that informs the reader precisely what to expect is
becoming a rare commodity in historical writing.  More common is a title
that intrigues but leads the reader well into the piece before revealing
the purpose of the work.  Not so with Gregg D. Kimball's fine study of
Richmond's diverse populations and the cultures they created in the twenty
or so years preceding the Civil War and the reshaping of those cultures
during the war itself.  The reader knows exactly what Kimball hopes to
prove from the title. Richmond fully embodied those characteristics
associated with antebellum cities: burgeoning industrialism, elite
paternalism in benevolence and reform activities, European immigration,
elite women and workingmen claiming public space and voice, a lively
culture among free people of color amidst white repression and suspicion,
merchant concerns about free trade and adequate transportation networks,
and vigorous partisan politics.  Antebellum Richmond was, he argues, a
fully "American City."

At the same time, Richmond's culture continually absorbed and responded to
southern mores.  Active slave markets flourished in the heart of the city,
including auction halls at a major hotel and the Odd Fellows Lodge.  City
elites cooperated with wealthy planters to hold sway over Richmond
politics, and free labor constantly competed against bond labor in
everything from iron manufacturing to domestic service.  African-Americans
fiercely maintained kinship ties throughout the South as slaves were sold
and moved. The momentum for secession developed slowly in the city; when
Virginia held elections for a special convention to debate the subject,
Richmond sent a predominately Unionist delegation. As secession sentiment
triumphed and war came to Richmond, she acknowledged her "Southern Place"
at great cost to Richmonders.

The book's subtitle best conveys the particular richness of this urban
history.  Here is "a cultural history" with full attention to the entire
colorful and diverse population of antebellum Richmond.  Kimball's study is
resplendent with quotations from artisans, both black and white, women,
planters, African-American laborers, southern boosters, newspaper editors,
and recent immigrants.  This reader had the sense that she was meandering
through a thoughtfully designed museum exhibit, where no detail of urban
life was omitted and no complexity of relationships was ignored. Moving far
beyond the usual topics of an urban history, Kimball tries to uncover the
intangibles that defined the city's social and political life, and he does
so from the perspective of the many actors who both created antebellum
Richmond and were shaped by it. Whether he is examining urban cemeteries,
prostitution, railroad development, masculinity, slave auctions, political
debates, or labor disputes, Kimball slights no aspect of cultural formation.

The book is divided into three sections, each useful in its own way, and
all connected through the repetition of themes and characters.  Part One is
best likened to a traditional urban history with an emphasis on the various
commercial and manufacturing ventures.  However, it is Kimball's attention
to both the people who ran them and the people who worked in them, slave
and free, that makes this section come alive. Excellent maps assist in
illustrating both Richmond's daily involvement with northern commercial
interests and the constant reifying of her role as a center of slavery and
southern mores. Local manufacturing included the well-known Tredegar Iron
Works, flourmills on the James River and Kanawha Canal, and some fifty
tobacco factories. The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad made
the city "the southernmost outpost of a northern railroad" (19) and helped
spur an urban growth rate of 63.3 per cent between 1840 and 1860 (39).

Richmond's participation in antebellum reform efforts lay on the
conservative side.  Kimball notes that city elites organized against
so-called moral problems like alcohol, gambling and prostitution, but he
does not note that Richmonders failed to critically examine poverty and its
causes as did northern reformers such as Matthew Carey or Joseph Tuckerman.
Frequent exchanges between planters in the new western tobacco regions and
the urban elite reveal shared "ideas of honor and trust common to Southern
society" (24).  Although many historians associate Richmond with industrial
slavery, perhaps because of Charles Dew's classic study, Kimball
illustrates that of the eight thousand domestic workers in the city, most
were slaves.  Though important, industrial slavery was not typical of the
Richmond slave experience.[1]

Richmonders remained strongly attached to their Revolutionary heritage and
the Union it represented, as enacted in two major cultural events of 1858 -
the dedication of a new monument of George Washington and the reburial of
the remains of James Monroe. It is the tension between these two identities
-- American and Southern -- that Kimball so thoughtfully and gracefully
explores in the sections that follow.  In Part Two, Kimball fleshes out
what is already a complex urban history with chapters on specific cultural
milieus of various groups with emphasis on their "connections" to the
larger world. Deep research into the city's newspapers, business and
personal journals, church records, and family letters makes this section
particularly rich. In the case of merchants and their families, Kimball
weaves their trade connections, travels, and commentary on Virginia life
into a vibrant portrait of upwardly-mobile Richmonders who find much to
like and love in the city, while sometimes questioning the influence and
mentalite of the planter class.

A chapter on African-American life shows slave connections both to the Deep
South, where sold family members often served, and to the north, as
increasing numbers "took their freedom."  Richmond contributed many people
of color to the business of the Underground Railroad, ably assisted in many
cases by free blacks that worked on the steamboats and railway cars. The
First African Baptist Church was established in 1841 under the leadership
of a (required) white pastor, Rev. Robert Ryland.  An all-black Board of
Deacons presided over the one thousand member congregation composed of both
free people of color and slaves.  Kimball uses its extensive records to
document the movement out of Richmond of many people of color.

In a chapter on "Strangers, Slaves, and Southern Iron," Kimball
reinterprets the conflict between northern white skilled ironworkers and
the hired slave labor that James Anderson utilized at Tredegar Iron
Works.  Whereas Charles Dew and other historians have portrayed Anderson as
defeating the striking white workers in 1847 and "winning" the contest over
who should work in skilled industry, Kimball argues that Tredegar
production levels never recovered from the strike, and that Anderson
constantly had to negotiate improved contracts to gain the skilled
employees he needed.

The fourth cultural group studied are the volunteer militia companies who,
Kimball argues, constructed a "culture of manly behavior and ritual
brotherhood" through which Richmond men, particularly the working- and
artisan-class, came to understand and embody their masculinity (184). His
thoughtful analysis of the toasts and speeches at militia banquets suggests
their firm commitment to the Union even in the 1850s when the rhetoric of
southern nationalism became pronounced.  German, Irish, and
African-American militia organized as well, with the latter mainly
providing music for militia events.  He uses the Richmond Light Infantry
Blues' trips to meet with Philadelphia volunteer regiments, and their
reciprocal visits to Richmond, to emphasize the friendly intercourse and
national scope of this fraternal tradition.

The final section, "Choosing Sides," shows how the "antebellum views of
Richmonders shaped allegiances during and after the Civil war"
(xxiii).  Kimball complicates and deepens our understanding of just how
difficult the choices of 1861 were and how secession destroyed the cultural
worlds of many citizens.  Even as many cheered the Confederacy, others who
had moved to Richmond, established businesses, and raised families, shared
Jacob Bechtel's view that "we are as strangers and aliens here"
(217).  Kimball argues that "the shallow support Richmond gave the
Confederacy has never been fully appreciated" (218).  He uncovers
significant debate among commercial men over the economic repercussions of
secession and among working men who met to propose delegates to the special
convention.  He shows the torn loyalties of some elite women as expressed
in their personal correspondence and he notes the irony of black men and
women conscripted to aid the war effort in direct opposition to their own
interests.  An Epilogue reiterates the themes of the book as the antebellum
cultural legacies played out in a radically different Richmond after the
war.

_American City, Southern Place_ is a deeply researched, carefully argued,
and gracefully written study of the multiple voices and intertwined
cultures that made up one small segment of antebellum America. This work is
not a standard antebellum political history with some information about
African-Americans, immigrants, and women added.  Rather Kimball peoples the
city and builds his argument around the real concerns, struggles, and
decisions of many groups.  He illustrates the national interests and
connections of Richmonders from various ethnic, racial, and employment
backgrounds.  Concurrently he demonstrates values, manners, and beliefs
these same citizens shared with residents of the Deep South.  Students of
southern, urban, antebellum, and African-American history will find much
value in this work.  Historians of any period or region can profit much
from following Kimball's approach to multiple contexts and multiple voices.

_Notes_

[1]. Charles B. Dew, _Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and
the Tredegar Iron Works_ (New Haven: Yale University, 1966).

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