Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Grand Rapids
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://studylib.net/doc/7544495/steven-elliott-tripp—grand-valley-state-university * https://www.gvsu.edu/history/steve-tripp-54.htm *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 96076566 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n96076566 |
| HEADING: | Tripp, Steven Elliott, 1956- |
| 000 | 00390nz a2200133n 450 |
| 001 | 3178613 |
| 005 | 19960807112807.4 |
| 008 | 960807n| acannaab |n aaa |
| 010 | __ |a n 96076566 |
| 035 | __ |a (DLC)n 96076566 |
| 040 | __ |a DLC |c DLC |
| 100 | 10 |a Tripp, Steven Elliott, |d 1956- |
| 670 | __ |a Yankee town, southern city, 1996: |b CIP t.p. (Steven Elliott Tripp) pub. info. (b. 08-28-56) |
| 953 | __ |a se30 |
PERSONAL
Born August 28, 1956.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1979; University of California, Davis, M.A., 1985; California State University, Hayward, secondary teaching certificate, 1980; Carnegie Mellon University, Ph.D., 1990.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, professor.
WRITINGS
Has presented papers at conferences and contributed articles to journals.
SIDELIGHTS
Steve Tripp teaches history at Grand Valley State University, with a focus on American social and cultural history and American masculinities. He has written two books, Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg and Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood.
Yankee Town, Southern City
In Yankee Town, Southern City, Tripp explores social and race relations in the southern city of Lynchburg, Virginia, in the period from secession to Reconstruction. David Goldfield, writing in the American Historical Review, called the book a “thoroughly researched and prudently argued book.” In examining the question of race and class relations during this period, few have found easy answers. As elite whites consolidated their position of power, the working-class blacks and whites were pitted against each other for jobs. Goldfield offered the opinion that the book could have been enhanced by comparing the class and race struggles in Lynchburg with those of other cities in the period, placing the city’s history in a wider regional context.
Crandall Shifflett, however, critiquing Yankee Town, Southern City in H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, observed: “Microhistory is a particularly powerful and effective approach to use in addressing such issues; it allows the historian . . . to examine big questions in small places.” Shifflett found that the book’s “profound contribution” is in its nuanced observations of class relations, which shifted during these years. As he put it, “The social control of elites over nonslaveholding whites rested upon perpetuation of what was becoming transitory in the 1850s: the argument that slavery guaranteed prosperity, social mobility, and independence for all hardworking southern whites.” With the end of the Civil War came deep changes in society, with rising class tensions and racial violence stemming from the emancipation of the blacks and overall economic depression. Shifflett concluded, “Historians would do well to ponder the meanings of this book. It helps us understand the class dimensions of southern ethics and behavior.”
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood
Tripp’s second book, Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood, is a biography of this early Major League Baseball player, known as the “Georgia Peach.” Cobb, who Tripp describes as “combative and egocentric,” set ninety MLB records in his twenty-three year career. Trent Brown, writing in the Journal of Southern History, remarked: “Tripp’s book is one of the best recent studies not only of baseball but of southern and American masculinity as well.
Tripp shows us how essential it is to ground Cobb’s conception of manhood, and consequently his entire baseball career and public persona, in models that Cobb studied while growing up in Georgia at the end of the nineteenth century.” In this way, Tripp puts Cobb in social and historic context. Brown asserted that “anyone who wishes better to understand American masculinity and the appeal of baseball in the early twentieth century should consider Tripp’s measured, persuasive reading of Ty Cobb.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “Tripp’s stunning account of Cobb as a mythic player and manager is a complex glimpse into a tormented personality.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Historical Review, December, 1999, David Goldfield, review of Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg, p. 1672.
Journal of Southern History, August, 2017, Trent Brown, review of Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood, p. 730.
ONLINE
Grand Valley State University Website, https://www.gvsu.edu (January 6, 2018), author faculty profile.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (September, 1997), review of Yankee Town, Southern City.
Publisher’s Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (January 5, 2018), review of Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood.
Steve Tripp - D-1-138 MAK, (616) 331-3432, tripps@gvsu.edu
Professor of History
Fields: U.S. Social and Cultural; American masculinities
Degrees: BA, University of California at Berkeley, 1979
MA, University of California at Davis, 1985 Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 1990
Steve Tripp teaches courses in American social and cultural history and American masculinities. He also teaches Writing History (HST 200) and History Research Methods (HST 290) on a fairly regular basis.
Tripp is the author of Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg (New York University Press, 1996) and Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). He is currently exploring the world of the “Forgotten Man,” the down and out men who became symbols of the Great Depression.
For more information, please see Prof. Tripp's Curriculum Vitae for his academic pursuits. Those interested in his nonacademic life can find him on Facebook.
1
Steven Elliott Tripp
Department of History
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401
616
-
331
-
3432
tripps@gvsu.edu
E
DUCATION
Ph.D., Social History, Carnegie Mellon University, December 1990. Dissertation:
“Restive Days: The Transformation of Race and Class Relations in Lynchburg,
Virginia, 1858
-
1872.”
M.A., History, University of California at Davis, March 1986.
Secondary Teaching Credential, California State University at Hayward, 1980.
B.A., History, U
niversity of California at Berkeley, 1979.
H
ONORS
,
G
RANTS
,
AND
F
ELLOWSHIPS
Michigan Virtual University (Summer 2002) to developon
-
line resources related to the
historical methodology for Michigan K
-
12 teachers.
Last Lecture Series (November 2001). Over
600 students are asked each semester to
name their favorite teacher. The top three vote getters are asked to give a “last
lecture.” I was selected in Fall 2001.
Nominated: Outstanding Teacher Award, Grand Valley State University (2000, 2001)
Pew Facult
y Teaching and Learning Center Grant (Summer 2000) for creation of web site
on Information Literacy in American History General Education Course. This site
is on
-
line through the Library webpage.
Pew Faculty Teaching and Learning Center Grant (Summer 20
01) for expansion of on
-
line resource site for American History General Education Course. This site is
on
-
line through the History Department webpage.
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant (Summer 1999) for
archival research on South
ern society after Confederate defeat.
Choice Magazine
List of Outstanding Academic Books (1997) for
Yankee Town,
Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg
.
Phi Beta Kappa, University of California at Berkeley, 1979.
C
URRENT
R
ESEARCH
Ty Cobb and His Public
. A monograph
-
length examination of Cobb’s relationship with
fans, the media, and fellow baseball players to explain broader issues in the
history of sports, manhood, and the ethic of honor.
P
UBLICATIONS
Yankee Town, Southern City:
Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg
. New
York: New York University Press, 1997 (Paperback edition 1999).
Reviews
available upon request.
"Racial Segregation" and "Reconstruction," in Peter Stearns, ed
., Encyclopedia of Social
History
. Ne
w York: Garland Publishing, 1994.
"Race, Class, and Religion: Lynchburg, Virginia's 'Great Revival of 1871,'"
Mid
-
America
.
75(1993):5
-
21..
M
OST
R
ECENT
R
EVIEWS
Lorri Glover,
Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation
. By Lorri Glover.
Baltimore: John
s Hopkins University P
ress, 2007. Pp. x, 250.
The Historian
.
Forthcoming
2
Simons, William M. ed.,
The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American
Culture, 2003
-
2004
. McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson, NC
,
2005. Pp x, 274.
Journal of Sp
orts History.
Forthcoming.
Peter s. Carmichael,
The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion
.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
North Carolina Historical
Review
. 2006 83 (3): 392
-
3
Absolute Massacre: The New O
rleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866
. By James G.
Hollandsworth, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001)
Journal of American History
. 2003 108(1): 198
-
199
.
Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation
.
By J.
William Harris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Journal of
Social History
. 2003 36(3): 806
-
808.
American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond
. By Gregg D.
Kimball (Athens: University of Georgia Press
, 2002). Civil War History 48(2002).
Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation
Virginia
. By Jane Dailey
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)
The Journal of Southern
History
68(2002).
Confederate Home Front: Montgomery
During the Civil War
. By William Warren
Rogers, Jr. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999).
Journal of
American History
87(2000).
Rich Man’s War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee
Valley.
By David Williams (Athe
ns: University of Georgia Press, 1998).
American Historical Review
105(2000).
Reviews also appear in
Labor History
,
Michigan Historical Review
,
Georgia Historical
Quarterly
,
Alabama History
,
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,
and
Western
Penns
ylvania Historical Magazine
.
P
ROFESSIONAL
E
XPERIENCES
R
ELATED TO
T
EACHING
Open Classroom
(Winter 2002, Fall 2002) Faculty were invited to visit my classrooms as
a way to encourage open discussions about teaching and learning.
Faculty Enhancing Community
Environments
(2000
-
1). A program created by Student
Housing to encourage faculty and students to get to know one another beyond
the classroom.
The Sporting Life
General Education Theme Group
Information Literacy Tutorial for Introduction to American Civi
lizations
(HST 103). Fellow
historian Tony Travis and I surveyed history web sites and helped to write the text
for this on
-
line tutorial. The tutorial will serve as a prototype for other general
education courses.
University Task Force on the Scholarship
of Teaching
(1999
-
2000). This committee was
created by the Dean’s Council. Our mission was to write a statement explaining
the Scholarship of Teaching for personnel decisions.
University Search Committee for Director of the Teaching and Learning Center
(1996
-
7).
The goal of our committee was to hire a trained professional in faculty
development. The committee recommended hiring Katherine Frerichs.
Advisory Committee, Faculty Teaching and Learning Center
(1995
-
7). I served on this
committee during t
he Teaching Center’s formative stages. Our primary task was
to decide what model the Center should follow.
Advisory Committee, African and African American Studies
(1992
-
1997).
Faculty Advisor, Phi Alpha Theta, History Honors Society
(1992
-
6).
Honors Prog
ram Advisory Committee
(1992
-
6).
Summer Seminar for the Development of Multicultural Education
(1991). Our mission
was to create a course that examines the multicultural nature of the United
States. The results of our labors is University Studies (or US)
101
3
C
ONFERENCES
Paper, “
’On His Nerve
:’
Ty Cobb and Early 20
th
Century Male Sporting Culture
.” American
Popular Cultre Association (April 2007).
Paper, “Building
an On
-
line Learning Community,”
Innovations in Collaboration:
A School
-
University Model To
Enhance History Teaching, K
-
16 (June 2003).
With Anthony Travis, Department of History, Grand Valley State University
Comment: “Labor in Late Antebellum Southern Cities,” Organization of Southern
Historians, November 2000
Paper, “ Lynchburg Society Durin
g the Civil War,” Civil War Seminar, Liberty University,
March 7, 1999 (by invitation).
Paper, “African
-
American Vigilance and Violence in Post Civil War, Lynchburg, Virginia,”
Great Lakes History Conference, October 1996.
Paper, "That Losing Feeling: Co
nfederate Lynchburg Confronts Defeat," Organization of
American Historians, March 1996.
Panel chair and comment: "Race and Violence in the United States," Great Lakes History
Conference, October 1995.
Panel chair and comment: "Early Nineteenth
-
Century Fr
ontier Communities," Great
Lakes History Conference, October 1994.
Paper and Panel Coordinator, "Confederate Military Service and the Persistence of Social
Deference: The Experience of Lynchburg Soldiers," Southern Historical
Conference, Atlanta, November
1992.
Panel chair and comment: "African
-
American History," Great Lakes History Conference,
April 1991.
Paper: "The Civil War and the Transformation of the Class Relations: Lynchburg,
Virginia, 1861
-
1870," Duquesne History Forum, October 1991.
Paper:
"Lynchburg's 'Great Revival' of 1871 and the Limits of White Solidarity."
Organization of American Historians, March 1990.
P
RESENTATIONS
“Now What?” Keynote Address, Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society Induction, Allendale, Michigan,
April 11, 2003.
With Ant
hony Travis, “Beyond the History Classroom: Teaching and Learning With Technology,”
Teaching and Learning with Technology Fair, Grand Valley State University, March 26,
2003.
With Sue Swartzlander and Anthony Travis, “Using the Internet to Help Students
Do History,”
Teaching and Learning with Technology Fair, Grand Valley State University, March 19,
2002.
C
OURSES
T
AUGHT
American Civilization: Honors Course (team taught with member of the English
Department)
The American Dream (Honors Junior Seminar)
A
merican Popular Culture, 1885
-
1945 (Honors Junior Seminar)
Survey of American History to 1877
Survey of American History From 1877
History of Race Relations in the United States
Antebellum United States History
Civil War and Reconstruction
African
-
American
History
American Social History
Industrializing America
History of
American Sports
History Capstone
Writing History
4
Rethinking the Civil War (graduate seminar)
African American History (graduate seminar)
American Cultural History (graduate seminar)
Othe
r Professional Experiences
Grand Valley State University
Arts and Humanities Division Personnel Committee ( 1999
-
2005
)
University Grievance Committee (1993
-
6)
Academic Senate (1990
-
1, 1998
-
9)
Executive Committee of the Academic Senate, Grand Valley State
University, (1990
-
1)
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American
Manhood
Trent Brown
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p730+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood. By Steven Elliott Tripp. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Pp. xxii, 401. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-4422-5191-5.)
Over a two-decade career, Ty Cobb dominated baseball, setting records for offensive production in nearly every category that mattered. More than a star athlete, Cobb was an American celebrity. Where he went, the press followed, as Cobb developed a reputation for daring, aggressive acts on the diamond and beyond. Historians of baseball have consistently recognized Cobb's role in creating the modern game. Biographies of Cobb have appeared regularly in recent decades. Steven Elliott Tripp's Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood, however, demonstrates how a skilled historian can cause us to rethink a figure we believe we know. Tripp's book is one of the best recent studies not only of baseball but of southern and American masculinity as well.
Tripp shows us how essential it is to ground Cobb's conception of manhood, and consequently his entire baseball career and public persona, in models that Cobb studied while growing up in Georgia at the end of the nineteenth century. Cobb, explains Tripp, learned that honor was central to manhood and that honor depended on insisting that other men recognize one's standing and independence. Were racism and violence central to the culture that shaped Cobb? Of course they were. One of Tripp's great achievements here is to squarely address that fact, while demonstrating both the complexity of Cobb and the reasons he appealed so broadly to American men, who saw in baseball a game that required "brains, brawn, and bravado," making it "the ideal training ground for modernity" (p. 233). "Baseball," wrote Cobb himself, "is a red-blooded spoil for red- blooded men" (p. 1).
Cobb's conceptions of manhood clashed with those of his more demographically diverse fellow players, many of whom formed their "conception of honor" in the "factories, shops, bars, and fraternal organizations of the industrial North and West" (p. 163). Cobb's sense of honor, too,
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depended on others, but the others were largely his peers, among whom Cobb could demonstrate that he was "man enough to be a big leaguer" and against whom he might display his "gameness" (pp. 82, 179). His southernness indeed made Cobb conspicuous, but it was more than a matter of accent or racial attitudes. Baseball, Cobb believed, was a serious business in which one worked constantly to exact tribute from fellow players and the crowd. American men of the era saw in Cobb something that spoke
to their sense that they were engaged in an arena of struggle. Baseball, like life itself, they believed, was a race in which "every moment is tense with anxiety, lest something already gained be lost," whether that something was a corporate position or the possession of second base (p. 234). Cobb worked to defend the reputation that he built. As a writer of opinion pieces and memoirs, Cobb wished to have others recognize that his will, daring, work, and drive were the keys to his success. While he might not have been sociable, Cobb displayed the "manly fortitude" that fellow players and fans prized (p. 178). Driving himself relentlessly, Cobb proved he could, to quote Christy Mathewson, "stand the gaff" (p. 179).
Throughout the book. Tripp shows a sure hand at setting Cobb within the broader context of American history, from the rural South to the urban world of the early twentieth century through the commercial boom of the 1920s. Chapter by chapter, Tripp corrects misconceptions and plain errors of fact that have obscured Cobb. On every page Tripp displays a thorough command of the scholarly literature on baseball and on American history more broadly. Anyone who wishes better to understand American masculinity and the appeal of baseball in the early twentieth century should consider Tripp's measured, persuasive reading of Ty Cobb.
Trent Brown
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Brown, Trent. "Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood." Journal of Southern History, vol.
83, no. 3, 2017, p. 730+. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078174 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=4d98bf28. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078174
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood
Steven Elliott Tripp. Rowman & Littlefield, $45 (388p) ISBN 978-1-4422-5191-5
Before baseball icons Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle, there was the prickly, talented Ty Cobb, whose life is the subject of this revealing biography by Tripp, a professor of history at Grand Valley State University. In a career spanning from 1907 into the early 1920s, Cobb, labeled by Tripp as a "combative and egocentric Southerner from the backwoods of Georgia," was the first celebrity baseball player, achieving most games played, most plate appearances, most hits, most runs, most stolen bases, most batting titles, and highest lifetime batting average by his career's end. His biographer highlights Cobb's competitive nature, quoting New York sportswriter Paul Gallico as saying the death of Cobb's father brought out a fury, cruelty, and viciousness in his playing that hadn't previously been present in baseball. Cobb, disliked by his teammates and opponents, is termed an example of true Southern manhood; he was set apart by his drawl and actions, and his belief that black people were inferior to whites. His "gritty, go-for-broke" play showed his obsession of staying on top, and his aggressive game, including playing through injuries, earning him stardom, adoration, and endorsements. Tripp's stunning account of Cobb as a mythic player and manager is a complex glimpse into a tormented personality. (May)
Shifflett on Tripp, 'Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg'
Author:
Steven Elliott Tripp
Reviewer:
Crandall Shifflett
Steven Elliott Tripp. Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg. New York and London: New York University Press, 1997. xviii + 344 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8147-8205-7.
Reviewed by Crandall Shifflett (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Published on H-CivWar (September, 1997)
Change and continuity, conflict and consensus--these have been the twin pillars of historical writing about the South for a half century, at least since Wilbur J. Cash's monumental The Mind of the South (1941). This book is built upon the same foundation: "For the most part, I find myself in agreement with those who have argued discontinuity over continuity, conflict over consensus--but not by much" (p. 2). Critics might argue that Tripp's work proves the maxim, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." And the author would probably agree with this statement, too, because this is not a book that delights in historiographical polemics, perhaps a mark of change itself in a new generation of graduate students. Although Tripp does not hesitate to engage previous historians or even to speculate, more often he tells his story with an impressive array of evidence. He has also benefited from the critique of skilled and proven craftsmen in the profession. Peter Stearns, John Modell, and Joe William Trotter directed his dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University and his subsequent revisions leading up to this book. Tripp has written an insightful, highly readable book about Lynchburg, Virginia, just before, during, and after the Civil War.
Local studies of the Civil War South, such as those of Daniel Sutherland, Wayne Durrill, Stephen Ash, Vernon Burton, and Robert Kenzer, continue to deepen our understanding of this terrible war and show how much can be learned about war and society by integrating battlefield and homefront study. The war's impact on the population and society; the role of noncombatants; why men fought and what they thought they were fighting for; the ingredients of morale, its ebb and flow, and how it shaped behavior, battlefield performance, and the war's outcome; the relationships between southern culture, republicanism, and militarism; and the complexities of race, class, and gender all have been subjects of inquiry that just a couple of decades ago received scant attention from Civil War historians. Microhistory is a particularly powerful and effective approach to use in addressing such issues; it allows the historian, in Charles Joyner's terms, to examine big questions in small places.
Tobacco was king in prewar Lynchburg. By 1860, there were forty-five factories in the city limits, representing an investment over a million dollars, a product value of nearly two million dollars, and a workforce of 1,054. Lynchburg tobacco contributed 17 percent to the state's revenue of manufactured tobacco sales. Thirty-two of the town's sixty-eight "tobacconists," as they preferred to call themselves, ranked among the town's wealthiest decile. As for labor, nearly forty percent of the town's population were slaves, and virtually all of the factory hands were slaves. As Tripp writes, "The world of tobacco factories was a world of black slavery" (p. 12).
Factory slavery differed from field labor. It allowed slaves to live free of their masters' supervision, in shanties along the city's narrow alleys and ravines. Here slaves attempted to establish their own independent lives, and in fact some used overtime earnings to procure many necessities. Fearful of too much freedom, masters looked for ways to tighten the bonds of the patriarchal household that living apart loosened. Since many slave women worked in homes as domestic servants, masters had the opportunity to use the paternalistic model on these servants who relied upon them for food, clothing, and shelter. A variety of city institutions, including churches, charities, and police agencies, helped masters to establish their power over their slaves. Mostly, however, masters tried to use the binding force of benevolence. They supported black Sunday school programs, constructed black churches, controlled charitable agencies, and, when benevolence failed, were not hesitant to use police power to discipline and control the errant.
It is in the area of class relations where this book makes its most profound contribution. The social control of elites over nonslaveholding whites rested upon perpetuation of what was becoming transitory in the 1850s: the argument that slavery guaranteed prosperity, social mobility, and independence for all hardworking southern whites. The declining proportion of slaveholders, growing concentration of wealth, and soil depletion made such an argument problematic. Slaveholders believed they could overcome class tensions by maintaining close and personal relationships with white artisans and semi-skilled workers. Although living together in mixed residential neighborhoods of rich and poor did not guarantee social harmony, other forces were also at work. Wealthier citizens used credit networks, visited the poor during times of distress, mounted poor relief drives, patronized local craftsmen to build their homes, and in many other ways practiced the art of paternalism and personalism to retain the support of lower-class whites. For their part, laborers who did not own slaves still understood their status in relationship to slavery. Tripp finds that these whites accepted the basic tenet of southern republicanism identified by J. Mills Thornton, III; namely, they connected white liberty and independence to black slavery. The contradictory ideals of deference and egalitarian republicanism troubled the elites, but economic dependency and political powerlessness kept white laboring men from challenging elite dominance. Consequently, artisans and laborers looked for other ways to express their independence and autonomy by building new relationships with elites and especially in forging a distinct leisure culture.
The book is a study of all levels of Lynchburg society, but we learn the most about lower class whites and the world of the profane. The author makes exemplary use of local newspapers, the manuscript censuses, church and court records, and federal archives to present the best portrait yet of the elusive and seldom understood world of laboring class culture before, during, and just after the Civil War.
Despite economic dependence and political powerlessness, Lynchburg's white laborers found independence from elite dominance in their own distinct leisure culture, not unlike the coal miners I studied in company mining towns of southern Appalachia. Living in shanties along narrow alleys and deep ravines, the lower classes of artisans and common white laborers gambled, whored, and drank in a section of the river basin on the southern edge of town colorfully called "Buzzard's Roost." There on the streets, in the grog shops and doggeries along the river or, to a lesser extent, in the nearby churches, they defended their republican ideals, resisted the imposition of middle class standards of propriety, and practiced a vernacular version of the code of honor, a compound of aggressiveness and rage they believed necessary to survival. Lynchburg's elite tolerated the Buzzard's poor white culture, so long as it remained confined to its own neighborhood and did not involve blacks. Also, the behavior of underclass residents confirmed their own race, ethnic, and class superiority.
In the street culture, we witness the unfolding dynamics of race and class in Lynchburg society. Not unexpectedly, civic leaders responded aggressively to black impropriety. They used harsher standards of justice, meted out punishments in the form of lashes or jail time, pronounced stiffer sentences, and generally prosecuted slaves' and free blacks' rowdyism, drunkenness, and breaking of curfew much more vigorously in comparison to the tolerance shown whites. Town officials were especially anxious about the intersection of lower-class white and black street culture in the Buzzard and attempted to thwart the black liquor trade and any social mixing of free blacks and slaves. Blacks and laboring whites shared a class-common world view that produced like patterns of behavior but within the limitations of racial conventions. Blacks too saw their world as hostile, violent, and competitive, and they possessed a similar understanding of honor as something to be defended by force if necessary. Generally, they attempted to avoid confrontations with whites and to keep whites from having to come in and settle disputes. Groceries and grogshops were places where blacks could not avoid interaction with whites. Blacks did insulate themselves, however, in the tobacco factories where they worked and where few lower-class whites dared enter. The factories became their meeting places and served as churches, funeral parlors, and gambling dens. The factory stood at the intersection of lower class cultures where whites and blacks met to buy and sell liquor, congregate, gamble, and fence stolen property. Regardless of the meeting place, interactions paid homage to social and racial conventions. Most whites, for example, found in "black" doggeries were either owners or their employees, i.e., pimps or prostitutes.
The Civil War loosened the ligatures of the prewar social order. Laboring whites became alienated from the political designs of elites, collective activism and separatism developed in the black community, and interracial violence increased. Class tensions increased markedly. Even in the early days of the war, complaints multiplied about supplies, rations, and living conditions in camps. Begging and foraging became part of routine life. Health problems grew among the soldiers, mostly lower-class whites, who soon realized that they were going to bear a large burden for this war. Soldiers saw that decisions of officers, mostly elites, had a much greater impact on their lives. Soldiers from evangelical churches questioned the morality of officers known for their whoring and drinking and demanded that civic leaders take action. Soldiers quickly learned they had power over elected officers and could compel them to meet their demands for blankets, rations, and the needs of sick and wounded. The malleability of the social hierarchy was short-lived, however, and was brought to an abrupt halt by conscription laws.
The passage of the draft laws breathed new life into officers' designs to recapture control over the soldiers. Conscripts lost the leverage the volunteers had enjoyed to leave the Confederate army. With new power under the authority of the draft, officers began to withdraw from their men, spend more time with other officers, and exercise their right to execute deserters. It was at this juncture that the cry went up of "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." Resistance, guerrilla warfare, bushwhacking, and social banditry increased, "as poorer whites in many locales helped to destroy much of the Old South" (p. 70). These findings are remarkable, first for showing the problems the draft law may have presented to the Confederacy very early in the war. Secondly, the reactions of southern soldiers to the contradiction between republican ideals of deference and egalitarianism, if widespread, would have been devastating to Confederate hopes of victory. Tripp does not argue that the draft laws alone caused the defeat of the South, of course, but his work certainly shows that the South may have lost more than it gained in compelling men to fight. Have historians underestimated the role of class, as embodied in the tenets of republicanism, in the war's outcome? During the final years of the war in Lynchburg, men refused to reenlist, the Heroes of America made inroads in southwest Virginia, and acts of collective violence and crime increased, as did desertions. Tripp agrees that all of these actions constituted what Paul Escott called "the quiet rebellion of the common people" that eventually led to defeat (p. 110).
Despite so much evidence to the contrary, Tripp emphasizes that countervailing forces encouraged loyalty, however, and most Lynchburg soldiers did not express class animosities. Just as often as war embittered, it also created devotion in those who were committed to the Confederate cause, if not the fight. Stories of atrocities, Yankee depredations against cattle, poultry, and other food stores, insults to women, liberations of slaves, and finally the federal sacking of Lynchburg on June 18, 1864--all of these events no doubt bred hatred toward Yankees and encouraged loyalty to the Confederacy.
Yet there is considerable ambiguity in the evidence. Not all southern soldiers were perfect gentlemen. In fact, Tripp found soldiers stationed around Lynchburg became serious threats to the safety and well-being of the community. War quickly transformed a manufacturing city into a garrison. The red-light district of prostitution spread from Buzzard to the central business district. Barkeeps, prostitutes, gamblers, and dancehall patrons catered to the men. Thievery, especially in the form of crimes against property increased; soldiers looked upon thievery as their "due." Civilians howled over the loss of morality, and the city responded with curfews, night watches, and closings of grogshops. Just as often, it seems, civilians were at the mercy of their own armies. Late in the war, civilian authorities lost control of the city as civilians joined the soldiers and went after clothing, tobacco, and shoes from the canal boats and river warehouses. Consequently, in March 1865, when rumors of a Yankee invasion spread, the military commander was able to muster only a few twelve-year old youths. Civic officials decided that Yankee rule was better than chaos and disorder, an attitude that carried over into the early years of Reconstruction.
Until 1867, local officials looked upon the Union as the best friend of the old order. Federal officials worked with the city's political and business leaders to protect private property, stop vandalism and rowdyism. The Buzzard was virtually shut down, as the doggeries were closed and prostitutes rounded up and garrisoned in the abandoned tobacco warehouses. Federal officials also proved lenient in the treatment of former rebels. In January 1866, federal officials returned police authority to local hands. Tobacco manufacturers resumed production. Officials also agreed with rebels that blacks were as yet too ignorant and unprepared for freedom. Black refugees coming to town to look for work were forced back into the countryside to sign labor contracts with local farmers. Freedmen's Bureau officials also cooperated with tobacconists to approve work conditions that required black factory laborers to be content with food and clothes or no more than thirty dollars per year in wages.
In 1867, conditions began to change. In elections of that year, the Republican party gained ascendancy and the Conservative restoration was temporarily halted. Former Confederates were stripped of their power. Blacks gained the vote. The result was that a loose coalition of blacks, relocated northerners, and former southern unionists managed a political campaign that beat the Conservatives at the polls and allowed them to control local politics until 1870.
Former slaves and free blacks also reacted to changing times. Their first reaction was to flee their owners; this was especially so with house servants, the most trusted of black workers whom white owners held up as models of affection and exemplars of the benevolence of the slave system. Each flight challenged the owners' misguided notions of slavery as a personal relationship. Black resistance continued. Former slaves refused to be whipped and stood up to sexual advances. The factories became places to demonstrate solidarity and plan collective action. In these prewar centers of labor, they organized churches, schools, funeral halls, fraternal associations, and political campaigns, and they planned labor strikes for better wages. By 1870, blacks had established an autonomous black community that included a debating club, temperance society, women's social circle, and several fraternal organizations in addition to a cluster of black businesses. Tripp asks whether such behavior is evidence of a larger trend where blacks chose to separate themselves from whites. He finds that blacks clustered on the town's perimeter for more practical reasons: they paid cheap rent on the outskirts (where poor whites clustered too); they could find employment on the periphery; and they had more freedom from whites there. Besides, the separation was never complete, since they worked for whites in the inner city, lived with poor whites on the periphery, and mixed with whites in the nightspots of the Buzzard.
The economic conditions of laboring whites deteriorated in the postwar years. They converted their kitchens, cabins, and smokehouses into homes, lived with their livestock virtually under the same roof, squatted in abandoned houses, and turned to crime, stealing railroad iron and gas caps, for example, to barter for food and drink. Laboring whites blamed these conditions, with some justification, upon black economic advances. In the 1860s, the number of white artisans declined forty-five percent while black artisans increased by seventy percent. Despite what they believed, however, most white labor suffered due to the effects of general deterioration of the local economy, not black competition. In fact, whites displaced blacks in tobacco factory labor. By 1870, nearly forty percent of all white unskilled laborers worked in the tobacco factories, at a time when tobacco factory workers had shrunk to half of prewar levels. Growing numbers of whites accepted jobs once defined as "nigger work." Lynchburg's efforts to rebuild its economy through furniture making, leatherwork, iron foundries, and coach manufacturing had little impact.
One of the most fascinating findings of Tripp's work deals with the dynamics of race and class relations during this period of economic transformation. Civic leaders fretted about class conflict, understandably, in a situation where large numbers of poor whites and blacks constituted a dispossessed and alienated class. Not surprisingly, Conservatives tried to use race to shatter potentially dangerous class liaisons. What is surprising, because so many historians have argued that race usually divided what class stood to unite, is that Conservatives were not completely successful in their race-baiting campaigns. No longer able to offer benevolence and patronage to laboring whites in the forms of charity and work, white laborers were no longer willing to accept class rule. Whiteness alone was not enough. Facing a growing crisis, elites turned to religion to save the community from collapse.
The Great Revival of 1871 soothed class tensions, but it did not resolve them. Once again, the dynamics of class offer more explanatory force that race. White leaders misunderstood that class gives rise to a distinctive value system and behavior. Many laboring whites refused to participate in a revival that was an occasion for white elites to bash the ethics and behavior of lower class whites. Some laboring whites even turned the tables and used the revival to point out the incongruence between upper class white behavior and the ideals they were espousing. Unskilled laborers reacted to the revival with great indifference. Indeed, the largest number of converts came from professional and semi-professional families. Although there were also other reasons for the failure of religion to produce reconciliation and harmony, this study shows that the role of class has been underestimated as a force in the history of the South.
Equally interesting and understudied is postwar collective black violence and vigilance, the subject of the final chapter of this book. The postwar period differed from the antebellum days when white vigilance disciplined defiant slaves and free blacks. After the war, white individuals usually carried out violence against blacks; black mobs, sometimes as large as a hundred people, on the other hand, usually carried out violence against whites. In a town that was forty-five percent black, collective black vigilance had a troubling impact. When groups of whites did attempt to disrupt political rallies, blacks armed themselves with bowie knives, pistols, and shotguns and walked to polling places in groups. Only occasionally did whites attempt to rally in large groups, but the Ku Klux Klan and other groups were too weak and ineffective to be of much concern to blacks. Three features characterized black violence: mobs played a central role; violence was usually directed against a perceived injustice, not random; and it had specific objectives that, when accomplished, led to dispersal of the mob. Tripp hastens to add that the lack of white mob violence is not evidence of interracial harmony. Instead, it is another example of class divisions.
An epilogue extends the discussion of race and class into the 1880s with Virginia's Readjuster and Farmers' Alliance movements. The author points to the legacies of race and class to show how disfranchisement resolved white anxieties.
Historians would do well to ponder the meanings of this book. It helps us understand the class dimensions of southern ethics and behavior. Race did not always unite more than class could divide. Race-baiting was not an infallible weapon against class divisions. Laboring whites, of course, were not free of racism, but neither were they so race-conscious that the hint of race could dissolve all class differences. The book also demonstrates the dimensions and significance of black agency during the early years of emancipation. Out of their experience in the old slave factories, blacks summoned a sense of solidarity and community that became the source of strength and collective will in the emancipation years. Black schools, churches, and businesses were spawned from this collective identity. The book offers challenges also to the idea of a unified white South, not just in the late years of the war when suffering and sacrifice had claimed many southern wills to fight, but from the beginning. Class divisions meant that the South's social structure had some serious cracks before it was tested by war. The laboring classes had a different value system, outlook, and set of needs from those of the middle and upper classes. They could not be easily manipulated with empty promises or scare tactics because the differences were not superficial. These fissures were exposed early, became more obvious under military authority, and unbreachable under the differential economic impact of full scale war.
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Citation: Crandall Shifflett. Review of Tripp, Steven Elliott, Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg. H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews. September, 1997.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1281
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