Henry Adams & the Southern Question

Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures

by Michael O'Brien

Book by O'Brien, Michael

201 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Various authors, various genres (not disambiguated)

Reviews

[Sam Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful books on Henry Adams I've ever come across. Michael O'Brien is a Southern historian and his brief, graceful account of Adams' involvement with the South, with slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and real-life black people, seems to reflect a lifetime's reflection on these matters, and more: how living in Washington, so much a Southern city, seemed to affect Adams; his Southern relatives (on his mother's side), his Harvard College roommates, one of whom, "Rooney" Lee, Robert E.'s son, was a kind of Steerforth for him, and one of the figures who influenced Adams' construct of the South as the 'feminine' side of the American soul. I got a better sense of Charles Francis Adams in a few pages here than I ever had before, and an appreciation of how Adams acquired the intuition into the characters of Jefferson and Madison that allowed him to write one of the greatest books ever, the History of the US during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison.
Also his unique and eccentric plan for Reconstruction, based exactly on the Roman method of colonization during the Republic....
It is also written with great feeling, grace and quiet humor. I am glad that I have a library copy of this book - if I owned it I would just keep rereading it at the expense of less pleasant tasks.

[Tim Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is good and important. I don't like commenting on work-related books here.