Questions and Comments on Last Section of the Book

To make things easier to follow, I decided to keep my comments separate from my highlights of the last part of the book.

-A refreshing footnote: He points out that Washburn presents a different view of the commission discussed in Ch. 14.  I’m not used to authors pointing out their opponents’ views.

-It’s interesting to see the origins of the Lords of Trades.  Was it created specifically in response to Bacon’s Rebellion?

-So, would it be accurate to draw a parallel between tobacco plantations at the time and banks today--“too big too fail”?

-Morgan doesn’t miss anything.  He picked up on the fact that the actual switch to slavery is tough to track because the African Co.’s monopoly kept prices up to where planters smuggled, so we’ll have to look elsewhere than official records.  He has an impressive awareness of the world in which his sources lived.

-This is all very helpful, but I’m not sure he’s proving all of his assertions.  He provides no evidence that this is why racism came about—it may have come in handy, but there could have been other reasons.  Also, I’m not sure he proved that Bacon specifically intended to subdue class conflict by racism.  By calling his attempt “instinctive,” he makes the point unassailable—the evidence would be hidden in Bacon’s subconscious.

-Here sure can turn a phrase: slavery was the “flying buttress of freedom.”  That sums up the entire book in picture.

-My conclusion: I don’t think you can prove a thesis that is so sweeping, but he makes an elegant and persuasive argument.  I also appreciate that he admits he can’t prove it (“It may be coincidence.”)  I still, however, agree with Yates that he could have made it shorter.

-Rhys Isaac, in Reviews in American History, gave a criticism that I thought had some merit: He claims that Morgan’s argument is post hoc propter hoc, and it relies too heavily on depictions of the governors’ struggles.  The political culture requires closer analysis.  Overall, though, he praises the book and says that Morgan sets up the opportunity for monographs that will fill in the gaps.

-Here Isaac’s summery and central criticism: “The overall interpretive structure is completed by means of post hoc propter hoc inferences drawn from the greater social stability which appears to have developed after the wealth of Virginia's rulers came to be largely derived from bondsmen who would never escape the strict discipline of servitude. As that discipline became harsher and more overtly racist, so it became both possible and necessary to develop more proudly a sense of the liberties to which, as free Englishmen, white Virginians were entitled. The historical elaboration of this persuasive proposition is almost entirely confined to a hasty narrative of struggles between governors and their councils…Since no clear delineation of antecedent political styles and forms of electoral behavior is offered there is no basis for comparison. The political culture both of seventeenth- and of eighteenth-century Virginia remains in need of close analysis.