Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (November 4, 1877 – January 21, 1934) was an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
who largely defined the field of the social and economic studies of the history of the Antebellum South and slavery in the U.S. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves. He concluded that plantation slavery produced great wealth, but was a dead end, economically, that left the South bypassed by the industrial revolution underway in the North.
Phillips concluded that plantation slavery was not very profitable, had about reached its geographical limits in 1860, and would probably have faded away without the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, which he considered a needless conflict. He praised the entrepreneurship of plantation owners and denied they were brutal. Phillips argued that they provided adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care and training in modern technology—that they formed a "school" which helped "civilize" the slaves. He admitted the failure was that no one graduated from this school.
Phillips systematically hunted down and revealed plantation records and unused manuscript sources. An example of pioneering comparative work was "A Jamaica Slave Plantation" (1914). His methods and use of sources shaped the research agenda of most succeeding scholars, even those who disagreed with his favorable treatment of the masters. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s historians turned their focus away from his emphasis on the material well-being of the slaves to the slaves' own cultural constructs and efforts to achieve freedom.
By turning away from the political debates about slavery that divided North and South, Phillips made the economics and social structure of slavery the main theme in 20th century scholarship. Together with his highly eloquent writing style, his new approach made him the most influential historian of the antebellum south.
Life and career
He was born on November 4, 1877, in
LaGrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia He graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
degree from the
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...
in 1897. He obtained his
Master of Arts
A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...
degree from UGA as well in 1899 and his Ph.D. in 1902 from
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
where he studied under William Dunning. His dissertation, ''Georgia and State Rights'' won the Justin Winsor Prize in 1901 and was published by the
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...
.Georgia Encyclopedia article on Phillips by historian John David Smith at
North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University (NC State, North Carolina State, NC State University, or NCSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Founded in 1887 and p ...
, Raleigh
Phillips was especially influenced by
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his front ...
who invited Phillips to the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
where Phillips taught from 1902 to 1908. He taught for three years at
Tulane University
The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...
. In 1911, Phillips moved to the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
where he taught until 1929 when he left to teach at
Yale
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
as Professor of American History until his death in 1934. In the 1920s he spent a year in Africa traveling and doing research. He received an honorary D. Litt. from Columbia University in 1929.
He married Lucil Mayo-Smith on February 22, 1911, and had three children: Ulrich, Mabel, and Worthington.
Historiography
Some of Phillips' views were rejected in the 1950s, but they were revived again in the 1960s. As Harvard Sitkoff wrote in 1986, " the mid-1960s Eugene D. Genovese launched a rehabilitation of Phillips that still continues. Today, as in Phillips' lifetime, scholars again commonly acknowledge the value of many of his insights into the nature of the southern class structure and master-slave relationships." In his own right, Genovese recognized in Phillips' work, as many of his colleagues chose to ignore, that master-slave relationships were complex, multi-faceted, more often negative, exploitive, and dehumanizing, yet provided very limited opportunities for some bondsmen to earn cash, travel outside the plantation situation, and enhance their personal values.
The Phillips school asked, what did slavery do ''for'' the slaves? As the historian Herbert Gutman noted, the Phillipsian answer was that slavery lifted the slaves out of the barbarism of Africa, Christianized them, protected them, and generally benefited them. What is apparent is that Phillips over-valued Christianity while under-valuing the sophistication of west African cultures, and had a rather limited grasp of African history in general. Scholarship in the 1950s then moved to the question, what did slavery do ''to'' the slaves, and concluded it was a harsh and profitable system. More recently, scholars such as Genovese and Gutman asked, "What did slaves do for themselves?" They concluded "In the slave quarters, through family, community and religion, slaves struggled for a measure of independence and dignity.
Claims of bias
Phillips has been described as a white supremacist historian. John David Smith of North Carolina State University argues:
hillips wasa conservative, proslavery interpreter of slavery and the slaves ... In ''Life and Labor in the Old South'' Phillips failed to revise his interpretation of slavery significantly. His basic arguments—the duality of slavery as an economic cancer but a vital mode of racial control—can be traced back to his earliest writings. Less detailed but more elegantly written than ''American Negro Slavery,'' Phillips's ''Life and Labor'' was a general synthesis rather than a monograph. His racism appeared less pronounced in ''Life and Labor'' because of its broad scope. Fewer racial slurs appeared in 1929 than in 1918, but Phillips's prejudice remained. The success of ''Life and Labor'' earned Phillips the year-long Albert Kahn Foundation Fellowship in 1929-30 to observe blacks and other laborers worldwide. In 1929 Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, appointed Phillips professor of history.
Phillips contended that masters treated slaves relatively well. His views were rejected most sharply by Kenneth M. Stampp in the 1950s. However, to a large degree Phillips' interpretive model of the dynamic between master and slave was revived by
Eugene Genovese
Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and ...
, who wrote that Phillips's "work, taken as a whole, remains the best and most subtle introduction to antebellum Southern history and especially to the problems posed by race and class." In 1963, C. Vann Woodward wrote: "Much of what Phillips wrote has not been superseded or seriously challenged and remains indispensable."
Phillips denied he was proslavery. He was an intellectual leader of the
Progressive Movement
Progressivism is a left-leaning political philosophy and reform movement that seeks to advance the human condition through social reform. Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to huma ...
and slavery, in his interpretation, was inefficient and antithetical to the principles of progressivism. Phillips (1910) explained in detail why slavery was a failed system. It is Smith's opinion that:
Phillips's contributions to the study of slavery clearly outweigh his deficiencies. Neither saint nor sinner, he was subject to the same forces-- bias, selectivity of evidence, inaccuracy--that plague us all. Descended from slave owners and reared in the rural South, he dominated slave historiography in an era when Progressivism was literally for whites only. Of all scholars, historians can ill afford to be anachronistic. Phillips was no more a believer in white supremacy than other leading contemporary white scholars.
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...
criticized Phillips's 1918 book ''American Negro Slavery'', writing that it was a "defense of American slavery" and that Phillips engaged in the special pleading fallacy. Frederic Bancroft's 1931 '' Slave-Trading in the Old South'' was a direct attack on Phillips and his school of thought; as historian Michael Tadman explained, "Where Phillips had emphasized slaveholder benevolence, Bancroft saw self‐interest. With Bancroft, the emphasis switched from proslavery to abolitionist traditions—and switched to the cruelty and immorality of slavery, to family separations and slave breeding, and to the everyday presence of the trader in every corner of the South." Bancroft's scholarly attack on the "benevolent paternalism" theory of slavery was so comprehensive that, per the '' Journal of Negro History'' book review in April 1931, "It will be necessary or slavery apologiststo work out another program to cover up the truth for another fifty years."
Views
Inefficiency of plantation slavery
Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and eventually had to fade away (as happened in Brazil). In 1910, he argued in "The Decadence of the Plantation System" that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power, that is,
Slave Power
The Slave Power, or Slavocracy, referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period. Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealth ...
.
Phillips' economic conclusions about the inefficiency of slavery were challenged by Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer, and
Robert Fogel
Robert William Fogel (; July 1, 1926 – June 11, 2013) was an American economic historian and winner (with Douglass North) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. As of his death, he was the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Se ...
in the 1950s and 1960s, who argued that slavery was both efficient and profitable as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn Fogel came under sharp attack by other scholars.
An essay by the historians George M. Fredrickson and
Christopher Lasch
Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiveness with ...
(1967) analyzed limitations of both Phillips and his critics. They argued that far too much attention was given to slave "treatment" in examining the social and psychological effects of slavery on Afro-Americans. They said Phillips had defined the treatment issue and his most severe critics had failed to redefine it:
By compiling instances of the kindness and benevolence of masters, Phillips proved to his satisfaction that slavery was a mild and permissive institution, the primary function of which was not so much to produce a marketable surplus as to ease the accommodation of the lower race into the culture of the higher. The critics of Phillips have tried to meet him on his own ground. Where he compiled lists of indulgences and benefactions, they have assembled lists of atrocities. Both methods suffer from the same defect: they attempt to solve a conceptual problem—what did slavery do to the slave?—by accumulating quantitative evidence.... The only conclusion that one can legitimately draw from this debate is that great variations in treatment existed from plantation to plantation.
Race as "central theme" of Southern history
In "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928), Phillips maintained that the desire to keep their region "a white man's country" united the white southerners for centuries. Phillips' emphasis on race was overshadowed in the late 1920s and 1930s by the Beardian interpretation of Charles A. Beard and
Mary Ritter Beard
Mary Ritter Beard (August 5, 1876 – August 14, 1958) was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was a ...
, who in their enormously successful ''The Rise of American Civilization'' (1927) emphasized class conflict and downplayed slavery and race relations as a cause of the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. By the 1950s, however, the Beardian
economic determinism
Economic determinism is a socioeconomic theory that economic relationships (such as being an owner or capitalist or being a worker or proletarian) are the foundation upon which all other societal and political arrangements in society are based. T ...
was out of fashion, and the emphasis on race (rather than region or class) became a major topic in historiography.
By 2000, Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore, and Bryant Simon argue by citing Phillips:
The ways in which white southerners "met" the race "problem" have intrigued historians writing about post-Civil War southern politics since at least 1928, when Ulrich B. Phillips pronounced race relations the "central theme" of southern history. What contemporaries referred to as "the race question" may be phrased more bluntly today as the struggle for white domination. Establishing and maintaining this domination--creating the system of racial segregation and African American disfranchisement known as Jim Crow--has remained a preoccupation of southern historians.
In his review of ''Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery'' by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, the historian Ira Berlin wrote, "Slavery in the North, like its counterpart in the South, was a brutal, violent relationship that fostered white supremacy. ''Complicitys authors shred the notion, famously advanced by the Yale historian U.B. Phillips, that the central theme of Southern history was the region's desire to remain a white man's country. Phillips was not so much wrong about the centrality of white supremacy to the South as blind to its presence in the North."
Works
For a comprehensive annotated guide see Fred Landon and Everett E. Edwards, "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," (1934).Fred Landon and Everett E. Edwards, "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," ''Agricultural History'' 8#4 (1934), pp. 196-21 in JSTOR /ref>
* ''Georgia and State Rights: A Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations.'' American Historical Association Report for the Year 1901, Vol. 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902, his dissertation, earned him the Justin Winsor Prize awarded by the
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...
(reprint 1983 online edition * ''A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860''. (1908) online edition * ''The Life of Robert Toombs''. (1913) online edition * ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime''. (1918; reprint 196 online at Project Gutenbergonline at Internet Archive * ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. (1929). excerpts and text search * ''The Course of the South to Secession: An Interpretation''. (1939). online edition
Edited
* ''Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources.'' 2 Volumes. (1909) vol 1&2 online edition * ''The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb''. ''Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911,'' Vol. 2. Washington: 1913.
* ''Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones.'' (coedited with James D. Glunt). (1927).
Articles
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* "Calhoun, John Caldwell, 1782 - 1850" ''Dictionary of American Biography'' (1929) 3:411-419; 7400 words
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References
Notes
Bibliography
* Dillon, Merton Lynn. ''Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: Historian of the Old South'' (1985), biography.
* Fogel, Robert William, and Engerman, Stanley L. ''
Time on the Cross
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compa ...
: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'', (1974), 1995 reissue, New York: Norton, .
* Fogel, Robert William. ''The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective'' Louisiana State University Press, 2003. , chapter 1.
*
Genovese, Eugene D.
Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and ...
"Race and Class in Southern History: An Appraisal of the Work of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 345-358 in JSTOR * Genovese, Eugene D. "Ulrich Bonnell Phillips & His Critics." ntroduction toUlrich Bonnell Phillips. ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime'' Louisiana State University Press, 1966, pages vii-xxi.
* Hofstadter Richard. "U.B. Phillips and the Plantation Legend." ''Journal of Negro History'', 29 (April, 1944): 109-124 in JSTOR * Kugler, Ruben F. "U.B. Phillips' Use of Sources." ''Journal of Negro History'', 47 (July, 1962): 153-168 in JSTOR * Landon, Fred, and Everett E. Edwards. "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," ''Agricultural History,'' Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1934), pp. 196–21 in JSTOR * Parish, Peter J. ''Slavery: history and historians'' (2nd. ed. 1990)
* Potter, David M. "The Work of Ulrich B. Phillips: A Comment." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 359-363 in JSTOR * Pressly, Thomas J. "Ulrich B. Phillips." In ''Americans Interpret Their Civil War'' (Princeton University Press, 1962), pages 265-272.
* Roper, John Herbert. ''U.B. Phillips: A Southern Mind'' Mercer University Press, 1984.
* Singal, Daniel Joseph. "Ulrich B. Phillips: The Old South as the New," ''Journal of American History'', 63 (March, 1977): 871-891 in JSTOR * Smith, John David. ''An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918'' Greenwood Press, 1985, Chapter 8.
* Smith, John David; and John C. Inscoe eds; ''Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics'' (1990 online essays by leading scholars, pro and con
* Smith, John David. "Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934)" in ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia'' (2003 online version * Smith, John David. ''Slavery, Race and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends and Method, 1866-1953'' (1999)
* Smith, John David. "U. B. Phillips, the North Carolina State Literary and Historical Association, and the Course of the South to Secession," ''North Carolina Historical Review,'' (2010) 87#3 pp 253–282
* Stampp Kenneth M. "Reconsidering U.B. Phillips: A Comment." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 365-368 in JSTOR * Stampp Kenneth M. "The Historian and Southern Negro Slavery." ''American Historical Review'', 57 (April, 1952): 613-624 in JSTOR *Stephenson Wendell H. "Ulrich B. Phillips: Historian of Aristocracy." in ''The South Lives in History: Southern Historians and Their Legacy'' Louisiana State University Press, 1955, pages 58–94.
* Tindall George B. "The Central Theme Revisited." In Charles G. Sellers Jr., ed. ''The Southerner as American'' University of North Carolina Press, 1960, pages 104-129.
* Wish Harvey. "Ulrich B. Phillips and the Image of the Old South." in Wish, ''The American Historian: A Social-Intellectual History of the Writing of the American Past'' Oxford University Press, 1960, pp. 236–264.
* Wood, Kirk. "Ulrich B. Phillips." In Clyde N. Wilson, ed. ''Dictionary of Literary Biography, Twentieth-Century American Historians.'' Gale Research, 1983, pages 350-363.
* Woodward C. Vann. "Introduction" in Ulrich B. Phillips. ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963, pages iii-vi.