The South and the Sectional Conflict by David Morris Potter

The South and the Sectional Conflict Reviews

• 
  Erik Graff

  Here's another book read during breaks at Heirloom Books in Chicago, chosen because it consists of individual monographs on subjects related to the American Civil War. Although some of these essays are quite particular--did John Brown take advice from or really listen to blacks?--the bulk of the book is historiographical, in other words, a survey of, even a history of histories of the Civil War. Here the expanse of author Potter's knowledge is very impressive. I've read some dozens of books on the subjects he covers, but he's apparently read hundreds and hundreds.
  
  I'm also reading a history of Greece from the time of Marathon until the Makedonian conquest. Like Potter, it's a serious history, an academic history. Unlike popular studies, what impresses me about academic surveys like these two is how they outline our sources, on the one hand, and their interpretation, on the other--often highlighting how controversial interpretation can be. There is not, in a word, a single, unimpeachable narrative. Instead, as in the natural sciences, there are hypotheses, ever open to revision.
  
  This book came out in the late sixties. It would be interesting to see how many of Potter's suggestions for further research have been subsequently carried out.