The Creed of the Old South, 1865-1915

by Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924) was an American classical scholar. From 1856 to 1876 he was professor of Greek at the University of Virginia, holding the chair of Latin also from 1861 to 1866. He published a Latin Grammar (1867) and a Latin Series for use in secondary schools (1875), both marked by lucidity of order and mastery of grammatical theory and methods. He edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with a brilliant and valuable introduction. His views on the function of grammar were summarized in a paper on The Spiritual Rights of Minute Research delivered at Bryn Mawr in 1895. His collected contributions to literary periodicals appeared in 1890 under the title Essays and Studies Educational and Literary. He was elected president of the American Philological Association in 1877 and again in 1908 and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the degree of LL. D. from William and Mary (1869), Harvard (1896), Yale (1901), Chicago (1901), and Pennsylvania (1911); D. C.L. from the University of the South (1884); L. H.D. from Yale (1891) and Princeton (1899); Litt. D. from Oxford and Cambridge (1905).

Genres: History, Civil War, Southern, Nonfiction

126 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1915

Reviews

[Rick Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basil Gildersleeve, professor of philology at Johns Hopkins and a Virginian who lived through the Civil War, provides an elegant and moving explanation of the motivation of Southerners during the war. Whether you are a partisan for the North or South, this book will give you insight into the worldview of Confederate soldiers. Likewise you'll see how the mindset of Southerners compared with those of regional French, English, and Italian people at the same period in history.

This book was published in 1915, and Gildersleeve interacts with scholars and pundits from both North and South who had reflected on the war in the 50 years since it happened. Of most interest to me was the way the author said that fighting in the war helped him to understand Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War in ways he never could have before.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basil Gildersleeve, classical scholar and philology professor but also a Confederate soldier, reflects on the Confederate view of the war. He was “trying to make others understand and to understand myself what it was to be a Southern man twenty-five years ago; what it was to accept with the whole heart the creed of the Old South.”

The South truly felt themselves to be the heirs of the Greeks and Romans, and Gildersleeve embodies that spirit here.

[Niles L. Kaplan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for understanding some of today's conflicts among Americans

Following the end of the Civil War, Mr. Gildersleeve considered and wrote about possible causes of that conflict from the Southern perspective. As I understood his thoughts, he believed that the issue of state's rights was far greater an instigating factor than that of seeking to preserve the "peculiar institution" of slavery. He wrote from personal experience and both experiential and historical perspectives of the War with insight and persuasion. Throughout his manuscript, he compared the American conflict to the Peloponnesian War of ancient history. I can see how, in his day, when Greek and Latin were college subjects of major emphasis for all highly educated southern men, such comparison could be broadly understood. I found many of these passages tedious, although I was able to follow his thoughts. However, I was fascinated by his experiences of the Civil War and his perspectives of the southern men who fought on the side of seccionists, as well as those who fought as unionists. He made the point that, if the true economic costs of waging war and reconstruction of livelihoods, social order, and the torn and shredded land had been considered in advance, the South probably wouldn't have been so eager for the fight. However, he also pointed out the power that perception of insult to one's way of life, one's home (county, region, or state), or one's beliefs can have to ignite stubborn anger, leading to violence.
I read this book because I hoped for greater understanding of some of the issues of conflict in America today. First, the conflict that has arisen concerning flying or displaying the Confederate flag, which has led to desecration and destruction of statues honoring heroes of the Confederacy; and then to reconsideration of the merits of Revolutionary War-era heroes and leaders who created the United States of America in light of their involvement in slavery and or the continued subjugation of Black Americans, and the desecration of many of their statues and monuments also. The old issue of state's rights even has returned to the news in light of differing responses of individual states to the Corona virus in the absence of federal leadership.
With a broader, perhaps more accurate view of Southern history than I had as a result of my Northern education, I am beginning to glean an understanding of why the Confederate flag is so meaningful to so many Southerners today, and I even can understand a little of some Southern states' insistence that they have the right to do what their officials deem best for their citizens economically, socially, and concerning practices affecting the spread/incidence of Covid-19. I can understand a little of the resistance to the protests sweeping America, and some of the tendency toward violence. I don't agree with the counter-protesters, or the governors who are pushing for the normalization of social and economic life in their states regardless of the effects on the rest of the country. However, I believe that understanding leads to civility, and respect for or acceptance of one-another's views and beliefs, and that such understanding is essential to healing the social unrest and divisions that America faces today. Reading this book has given me some historical perspective and, I hope, was a step toward my own greater acceptance and respect of other Americans whose views differ from mine.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep Thoughts.

🖊 This is an interesting book that gives pause for thought. The Project Gutenberg e-book version has photographs of Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, while the Kindle version does not.

📕Published in 1915.
🎨Illustrated.

જ⁀ 🟢The e-book can be found at Project Gutenberg.
✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎

🔲 Excerpts of note:

🔹The war began, the war went on. War is a rough game. It is an omelet that cannot be made without breaking eggs, not only eggs in esse, but also eggs in posse.

🔹In the last score of years I have often been urged by friends and sympathizers to bring out as a separate issue my article, The Creed of the Old South, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1892, and which attracted wider attention than anything I have ever written. As this is the jubilee of the great year 1865, the memories of that distant time come thronging back to the actors in the momentous struggle, and I am prompted to publish in more accessible form my record of views and impressions that may seem strange even to the survivors of the conflict, now rapidly passing away.

🔹William Harrison Clarke, in The Civil Service Law, Preface, says: "Parties, when they strive solely for principle, are the life of a nation; but when they strive solely for pelf, patronage, and power they are its death. Even corrupt party leaders may destroy a republic; sometimes even ambitious leaders may do so.

My ratings for this work:
Plot: ★★★★★
Content: ★★★★★
Grammar: ★★★★★
Writing style: ★★★★★
Ease of reading: ★★★★★
My recommendation: ★★★★★
My total rating for this work: ★★★★★ (5.0)

[Jacques Defraigne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful contemplative reflection on the soul of the southerner and what motivated him during the great American struggle. The account is very personal as well as telling of southern identity. A great passage that gives you a good exemple:
"At all events, to those who have seen the midday sun darkened by burning homesteads, and wheatfields illuminated by stark forms in blue and gray, war is sufficiently concrete. The very first dead soldier one sees, enemy or friend, takes war forever out of the category of abstracts. .... and I was soon to see brought into camp, under a flag of truce, the lifeless body of the heir of Mount Vernon, whose graceful riding I had envied a few days before."

"The man whose love for his country knows no local root, is a man whose love for his country is a poor abstraction."

[Gregory Knapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gildersleeve has a unique style of writing where he incorporates stories from ancient Rome, Greece and 19th century Holland, along a little bit of Latin to help tell his story. He does provide a unique and interesting perspective on Lincoln's war, and pleasantly from the Southern perspective. His stories add a level humanity to the lives of both the soldiers and civilians during the war. I am very happy to have had the chance to read his book.

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The reputation of Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924) as an American scholar of the classics, particularly of Greek studies and of philology more generally, is beyond dispute. But the two essays of his which are combined in this volume, "The Creed of the South" (1892) and "A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War" (1897), have not aged well, to put it charitably. The value of this book is more historic than historical.

I had hoped for penetrating insights into the daily life of a confederate soldier during the American Civil War, but few are to be found here. Instead, Gildersleeve spends his time flaunting his erudition, which probably passed for high-brow diversion in his own time, but which now comes across as irksome and highfalutin. This is especially true in the first essay, and one inevitably considers that if this kind of Aeolian pretense that passed for Southern scholarship – especially long and obscure, sentimental passages in Latin and Greek intercut with the text-proper – while the North was emphasizing a more pragmatic curriculum – training in practical engineering and the kind of direct discourse serviceable to an expanding industrial culture – then perhaps the outcome of the war was less in doubt than might have been supposed. Flowery rhetoric will carry you so far until it puts you to sleep. The second essay is built upon a rather bizarre premise of comparing and contrasting the American Civil War with the Peloponnesian War, and this seems like an argument that only another philologist might conceivably appreciate.

For all its author's scholarship, this book is regrettable revisionist, although there's little doubt its author is sincere in all he says. The problem is the disconnect between what is said about the South's reasons for fighting years after the war had ended in contrast to what was said before and during the war. Here we have the usual "it was about states rights, not about slavery" mantra alongside the unironic assertion that white Southerners would never have debased themselves to be enslaved by the North. The historic aspect here is that its author is one of the earliest advocates of the Lost Cause theory.

This book is available for free from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24281) and elsewhere, and paying money for a copy of it seems to be contraindicated.

[Mike Vendetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basil L. Gildersleeve was a young professor of Greek at Virginia University when the American Civil War started. Fifty years later he is riding on a train and overhears two old soldiers about the battles they had been in, and he returns in his mind to those days. History is typically written by the victor, but here is a very interesting insight from the losing side by a very intelligent man. I narrated this as an audiobook available on audible.com, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[jim copley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different view

I have been interested in the causes and ramifications of the U.S. Civil was for awhile. This book has given me a rare opportunity to hear from the side that lost the war. They say that the victors write history so when the opportunity arises to hear from the other side I like to listen.