[Vision2020] UI Professor of History Comments On "Southern Slavery, As It Was" & "Black and Tan"

[Ted Moffett]

All-

If these specific comments have already been posted and/or discussed on
Vision2020, forgive the redundancy...But the commentary seemed too
significant to ignore, and it is dated a mere six days ago:
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http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/14/2006/11/#31873

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Eugene Genovese: An Idaho pastor accused of racism claims Genovese backs his
view of slavery <http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/31873.html>

Source: *Email to HNN by William L. Ramsey, assistant professor of history
at the University of Idaho *(11-15-06)

Fundamentalist Pastor Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho, may have fallen short
in his first attempt to overturn the last fifty years of academic
scholarship on slavery, which he has described variously as "abolitionist
propaganda" and "civil rights propaganda," but he intends to win the war. A
supportive comment from Eugene Genovese on the back cover of Wilson's new
self-published book on slavery, Black and Tan, appears to be the center-
piece of the new battle plan.

The "blurb" has been doing yeomen's duty in fundamentalist and
neo-Confederate circles for the past year, but it saw its first service in
mainstream public dialogue recently when Pastor Wilson published a guest
editorial in the November 5 issue of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. Angered
that historians from the University of Idaho, myself included, remained
critical of his happy portrait of southern slavery, Wilson pointed out that
his work has now received a positive "academic response." Eugene Genovese,
he claimed, "one of America's first-rate historians," had concluded that
Wilson "has a strong grasp of the essentials of slavery."

Concerned that the nationwide curriculum might now be obsolete, I visited
the Daily News offices and requested a follow-up investigation. Does
Genovese also endorse, for instance, the original pro-slavery pamphlet,
Southern Slavery, As It Was, which I myself dismembered in a review that can
be found here <http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=633361>? Or has Genovese merely
endorsed the watered down version that he edited in order to get the
Confederate partisans up to speed, which I dismembered
here<http://hnn.us/articles/23113.html>?
The confusion is genuine, since Wilson's pledge that he has discontinued
publication of Southern Slavery, As It Was, is only correct with respect to
his own garage. The pamphlet continues to be published verbatim in its
entirety by Bluebonnet Press in the textbook, The War Between the States,
which is currently being marketed on the front page of Wilson's website to
unsuspecting home-schooled children.

Will the Daily News follow up the story? Will their tell-all interview with
Eugene Genovese sink our national historiography? Will he refuse to answer
his phone?

Posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 6:13
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