The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston.

The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston. By Maurie D. McInnis. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. xii, 395. $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-2951-X.)

To understand the supreme self-assurance of Charlestonians on the eve of secession, contends Maurie D. McInnis in her new book, one only needs to look at the material culture of the city. She sets out to scrutinize its architectural landscape and visual artifacts to show how they were translated into class distinctions and how they affected the integrally connected lives of masters and slaves. The result is a well-conceptualized and well-documented, consistently focused, and lucidly written study, the virtue of which rests on its sound analysis as much as on the accompanying treasury of captivating archival iconography.

The first two chapters introduce the city's uniqueness: its highly polarized and hierarchical social structure extending from a cosmopolitan planter aristocracy of wealth and taste to a large population of laboring slaves; the regularity of city plans; its imposing public buildings; and the pervasively classical style of its piazza-secluded residences. The next three chapters offer a typology of public buildings. One category symbolized architectural control over slaves, always an urgent issue for slave owners in a city where slaves had more autonomy than elsewhere. Here we find the Arsenal associated with states' rights celebrations and the Guard House with its highly visible military presence. Another group of leaders was devoted to preserving social hierarchy: the Medical College of South Carolina and the College of Charleston, each serving sectional educational goals. Other types included the Apprentices Library Society for enlightening white mechanics; Charleston Hotel, representing the new commercial spirit; Hibernian Hall with its Irish interests; Charleston Theater, a symbol of cultural refinement; and the South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts, which promoted local artists.

Chapter 6 focuses on the usually invisible backlot, the counterpoint to the refined house front and interior. The backlot included outbuildings such as the kitchen, servants lodgings, carriage house, and pantries. These were often walled in, providing security but also cutting off the slaves living and working there from the city outside. Order here was not normally subordinated to an aesthetic but to utility, and the physical difference between the two spaces was a metaphor for social segregation. Chapter 7 uncovers a curious stylistic pattern: Gothic Revival style was not used for residences but for backlot outbuildings and public edifices such as charitable and penal institutions and churches. McInnis attaches this phenomenon to the new, humane ideology of slavery that portrayed it as a positive good for all within a vision of an organic, benevolent, Christian society. Gothic style resonated well with this romanticized, paternalistic fiction and provided a stylistic contrast to classical residences.

Another chapter reconstructs the double lives of domestic slaves, one defined by owners' expectations and the other a secret, private one, played out within a permanent game of control and evasion. The final section discusses the passion for display shown by the elite, with particular stress on tasteful interiors and social rituals for which they were designed.

One wishes for more discussion of Charleston's colonial roots to better explain its stylistic preferences as well as its resistance to Jacksonian democracy. A fuller connection could also be made between taste and its broader social and cultural context. Refinement is more than a communicative strategy of domination; some pursued it to contest provincialism and others, the stigma of being a parvenu. But these are minor points. McInnis succeeds well in demonstrating how styles of buildings and artifacts told people who they were and how they symbolically reflected and maintained order by demarcating social difference. This was why taste could serve Charleston's le monde as their cultural capital, bringing great dividends by elevating them not only above other residents but also above the materialistic bourgeoisie of the North.

MICHAL JAN ROZBICKI

Saint Louis University