Southern Tradition at Bay Oct 15, 1989 by Richard M. Weaver

THE SOUTHERN TRADITION AT BAY was Weaver’s doctoral dissertation but did not see publication until after his early death in 1963. Not a few critics regard it as his best book, surpassing even his classic and influential IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Here Weaver surveys the literature of the South from the postbellum era and shows how a variety of writers, from soldiers,journalists, and lady diarists to poets, novelists, and scholars, regarded the traditions of civility, gentility, piety, natural order and individualistic self-sufficiency the South so valiantly defended in the War Between the States. Weaver, though he expresses a discernible point of view in this matter, does not let partisanship hamper his responsibilties as an honest scholar. If he sees some logical fissure in the thinking of one of his featured writers, he notes such unflinchingly. He also permits the voices of dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in his study, most notably those of Walter Hines Page, George Washington Cable, and Henry Grady, among others, who would, to one extent or another, qualify as Southern liberals. Yet Weaver concludes that even these apostates found much to commend and preserve in the Southern tradition and thus did not denounce it totally.
This is a fascinating study, eminently and surprisingly readable, exhaustive but never exhausting, and well worth the time and attention of anyone truly and seriously interested in the “mind of the South.”