Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
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Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (born November 4, 1877 in La Grange, Georgia; died January 21, 1934) was a historian, focusing on the United States South and slavery.
From 1902 to 1908 he taught history at the University of Wisconsin, and at Tulane University until 1911. He then taught history at the University of Michigan until 1929, and at Yale until his death in 1934.
"Historians remember Phillips as a path-breaking scholar, as a pioneer in the use of plantation and other southern manuscript sources, as the inspiration for the "Phillips school" of state slavery studies, and as a conservative, proslavery interpreter of slavery and the slaves," [reports the New Georgia Encyclopia.]
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, [according to the New Georgia Encyclopia.]
Phillips was a member of the Dunning School, turn of the 20th century historians trained at Columbia University whose pro-Confederacy viewpoints have fallen out of favor. His books argued that slavery was inefficient and not progressive, and therefore eventually had to disappear. It was Phillips's controversial opinion that masters treated slave relatively well and that slavery itself was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power (see Slave Power). His economic arguments have been challenged by Robert Fogel, who argued that slavery was indeed efficient and profitable (as long as the price of cotton was high).
Works
- 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 (reprint 1983)
- American Negro Slavery; a Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime. New York: D. Appleton, 1918. online at [link] at Project Gutenberg
- A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908.
- Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston: Little, Brown, 1929.
- The Life of Robert Toombs. New York: Macmillan, 1913.
- The Course of the South to Secession; an Interpretation. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1939.
Works edited by Phillips
- 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: Government Printing Office, 1913.
- Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones. (coedited with James D. Glunt). St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1927.
- 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. Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1909.
Major articles by Phillips
"The Central Theme of Southern History." American Historical Review, 34 (October, 1928): 30-43. in JSTOR- "The Decadence of the Plantation System." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 35 ( January, 1910): 37-41. in JSTOR
- "The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt." Political Science Quarterly, 20 ( June, 1905): 257-75. in JSTOR
- "A Jamaica Slave Plantation." American Historical Review, 19 ( April, 1914): 543-48. in JSTOR
- "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts." American Historical Review, 11 ( July, 1906): 798-816. in JSTOR
- "Plantations with Slave Labor and Free." American Historical Review, 30 ( July, 1925): 738-53. in JSTOR
- "The Slave Labor Problem in the Charleston District." Political Science Quarterly, 22 ( September, 1907): 416-39. in JSTOR
- "The South Carolina Federalists, Parts 1 and 2." American Historical Review, 14 ( April and July, 1909): 529-43, 731-43. in JSTOR
- "The Southern Whigs, 1834-1854." In Essays in American History Dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner. New York: Henry Holt, 1910, pages 203-29.
- "The Traits and Contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner." Agricultural History, 19 ( January, 1945): 20-35. in JSTOR
- "Transportation in the Antebellum South: An Economic Analysis." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 19 (May, 1905): 434-58. in JSTOR
Secondary Sources
- Crocker Ruth H. "Ulrich Phillips: A Southern Historian Reconsidered." Louisiana Studies, 15 (Summer, 1976): 113-130.
- Merton Lynn Dillon, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: Historian of the Old South (1985)
- Robert William Fogel, The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective Louisiana State University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8071-2881-3, chapter 1.
- Genovese Eugene D. "Race and Class in Southern History: An
- Eugene Genovese, ed. Slave Economy of the Old South: Selected Essays in Economic and Social History (1968), with introduction by Genovese
- Genovese Eugene D. "Ulrich Bonnell Phillips & His Critics." [Introduction to] Ulrich 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."
- Kellar Herbert A. "The Historian and Life." Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 34 (June, 1947): 3-36.
- Kugler Ruben F. "U.B. Phillips' Use of Sources." Journal of Negro History, 47 (July, 1962): 153-168.
- 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.
- Smith John David. ''An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery
- [Smith, John David; and John C. Inscoe eds; Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics (1990)]
- Stephenson Wendell H. "Ulrich B. Phillips: Historian of Aris-
- Stampp Kenneth M. "The Historian and Southern Negro Slavery."
- 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
- Wood Kirk. "Ulrich B. Phillips." In Clyde N. Wilson, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Twentieth-Century American Historians. Gale Research, 1983, pages 350-363.
- Wood Peter H. "Phillips Upside Down: Dialectic or Equivocation?" Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (Autumn, 1975): 289-297.
- Woodward C. Vann. "Introduction." Ulrich B. Phillips. Life and
External links
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