South by Southwest: Planter Emigration and Identity in the Slave South.

South by Southwest: Planter Emigration and Identity in the Slave South. By James David Miller. The American South Series. (Charlottesville and London: Published by the University of Virginia Press in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2002. Pp. xiv, 205. $32.50, ISBN 0-8139-2117-1.)

During the first half of the nineteenth century, southerners, like other Americans, streamed westward at a rapid pace. In South by Southwest, James David Miller seeks to understand the meanings that slaveholders assigned to that movement and its relationship to their society. Rejecting the dichotomy that previous historians have set up between modernity and conservatism, Miller sees a more complex dynamic at work. Elite mobility included both impulses as southerners attempted to shape their developing society through migration.

Miller explores planter writings about migration, which reveal profound shifts in the identity of the slaveholding class over time. In their private correspondence individuals often stressed religious faith and human relationships--husband and wife, master and slave--as central to plantation society. Especially in the early decades of the nineteenth century, however, public sentiments focused on the connection between men and the land and expressed concern about the negative impact of migration. By the 1850s public expressions had caught up with private writings, and southern elites were generally united in their emphasis on faith and relationships rather than land. Southern society had made the transition from agrarian republicanism to proslavery ideology.

Miller focuses on the words of the planters themselves in private letters and diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, books, and advertisements. He makes deft use of these wide-ranging sources, teasing out the images, hopes, and concerns that suffused planter writings on land and migration. He also captures the constantly changing nature of plantation society during the early nineteenth century as his subjects pushed from South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally Texas.

While Miller does an excellent job of exploring the public and private expressions of planters, he raises some questions. Sectionalism is an important aspect of this work, especially because southerners came to view migration to new lands as central to the maintenance of their labor relationships. The Missouri crisis of 1819-1820, however, appears only briefly. It would be interesting to know how elite southerners considered this event and its relationship to migration. At the same time, Miller's focus on planters is somewhat vague. Did opinions and experiences differ within the slaveholding class, or were small- and large-scale planters likely to view mobility in similar ways?

Despite these questions, South by Southwest provides a thought-provoking analysis of the intellectual underpinnings of migration and convincingly portrays a planter society caught up in the rush to modernity through its evolving emphasis on relationships rather than land. Miller has produced a book that sheds light not only on the migration experience itself but also on the nature of southern society.

JULIA HUSTON NGUYEN

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi