Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (November 4, 1877 – January 21, 1934) was an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

who largely defined the field of the social and economic studies of the history of the Antebellum South and

slavery in the U.S. The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Sla ...

Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves. He concluded that plantation slavery produced great wealth, but was a dead end, economically, that left the South bypassed by the industrial revolution underway in the North. Phillips concluded that plantation slavery was not very profitable, had about reached its geographical limits in 1860, and would probably have faded away without the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, which he considered needless conflict. He praised the entrepreneurship of plantation owners and denied they were brutal. Phillips argued that they provided adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care and training in modern technology—that they formed a "school" which helped "civilize" the slaves. He admitted the failure was that no one graduated from this school. Phillips systematically hunted down and revealed plantation records and unused manuscript sources. An example of pioneering comparative work was "A Jamaica Slave Plantation" (1914). His methods and use of sources shaped the research agenda of most succeeding scholars, even those who disagreed with his favorable treatment of the masters. After the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

of the 1960s historians turned their focus away from his emphasis on the material well-being of the slaves to the slaves' own cultural constructs and efforts to achieve freedom. By turning away from the political debates about slavery that divided North and South, Phillips made the economics and social structure of slavery the main theme in 20th century scholarship. Together with his highly eloquent writing style, his new approach made him the most influential historian of the antebellum south.

Biography

He was born on November 4, 1877, in

LaGrange Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia He graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree from the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

in 1897. He obtained his

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree from UGA as well in 1899 and his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1902 from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

where he studied under

William Dunning William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States. He founded the informal Dunning School of inter ...

. His dissertation, ''Georgia and State Rights'' won the Justin Winsor Prize in 1901 and was published by the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

.Georgia Encyclopedia article on Phillips
by historian John David Smith at

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

, Raleigh Phillips was especially influenced by

Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his frontier thes ...

who invited Phillips to the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

where Phillips taught from 1902 to 1908. He taught for three years at

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...

. In 1911, Phillips moved to the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

where he taught until 1929 when he left to teach at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

as Professor of American History until his death in 1934. In the 1920s he spent a year in Africa traveling and doing research. He received an honorary D. Litt. from Columbia University in 1929. He married Lucil Mayo-Smith on February 22, 1911, and had three children: Ulrich, Mabel, and Worthington.

Historiography

Some of Phillips's views were rejected in the 1950s, but they were revived again in the 1960s. As

Harvard Sitkoff Harvard Sitkoff (born 1941 ) is an American historian. Life He lives in Durham, New Hampshire. Career He is a professor emeritus of history at the University of New Hampshire. He contributed to the 1974 ''Encyclopedia of American Biography' ...

wrote in 1986, " the mid-1960s

Eugene D. Genovese Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and s ...

launched a rehabilitation of Phillips that still continues. Today, as in Phillips's lifetime, scholars again commonly acknowledge the value of many of his insights into the nature of the southern class structure and master-slave relationships." The Phillips school asked, what did slavery do ''for'' the slaves? As the historian

Herbert Gutman Herbert George Gutman (1928–1985) was an American professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he wrote on slavery and labor history. Early life and education Gutman was born in 1928 to Jewish immigran ...

noted, the Phillipsian answer was that slavery lifted the slaves out of the barbarism of Africa, Christianized them, protected them, and generally benefited them. Scholarship in the 1950s then moved to the question, what did slavery do ''to'' the slaves, and concluded it was a harsh and profitable system. More recently, scholars such as Genovese and Gutman asked, "What did slaves do for themselves?" They concluded "In the slave quarters, through family, community and religion, slaves struggled for a measure of independence and dignity.

Phillips concluded slavery was inefficient

Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and eventually had to fade away (as happened in Brazil). In 1910, he argued in "The Decadence of the Plantation System" that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power, that is, Slave Power. Phillips' economic conclusions about the inefficiency of slavery were challenged by

Alfred H. Conrad Alfred Haskell Conrad (January 2, 1924 – October 18, 1970) was a distinguished professor of economics at Harvard University and City College of New York. He belonged to the quantitative economic current called new economic history, or cliomet ...

and

John R. Meyer John Robert Meyer (December 6, 1927 – October 20, 2009) was an American economist and educator. Meyer is credited with creating the field of transport economics and was one of the pioneers of cliometrics. Career Born in Pasco, Meyer atte ...

, and

Robert Fogel Robert William Fogel (; July 1, 1926 – June 11, 2013) was an American economic historian and scientist, and winner (with Douglass North) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. As of his death, he was the Charles R. Walgreen Di ...

in the 1950s and 1960s, who argued that slavery was both efficient and profitable as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn Fogel came under sharp attack by other scholars. An essay by the historians

George M. Fredrickson George M. Fredrickson (July 16, 1934 – February 25, 2008) was an American author, activist, historian, and professor. He was the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History at Stanford University until his retirement in 2002. After hi ...

and

Christopher Lasch Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiven ...

(1967) analyzed limitations of both Phillips and his critics. They argued that far too much attention was given to slave "treatment" in examining the social and psychological effects of slavery on Afro-Americans. They said Phillips had defined the treatment issue and his most severe critics had failed to redefine it:

By compiling instances of the kindness and benevolence of masters, Phillips proved to his satisfaction that slavery was a mild and permissive institution, the primary function of which was not so much to produce a marketable surplus as to ease the accommodation of the lower race into the culture of the higher. The critics of Phillips have tried to meet him on his own ground. Where he compiled lists of indulgences and benefactions, they have assembled lists of atrocities. Both methods suffer from the same defect: they attempt to solve a conceptual problem—what did slavery do to the slave?—by accumulating quantitative evidence.... The only conclusion that one can legitimately draw from this debate is that great variations in treatment existed from plantation to plantation.

Biases

John David Smith of North Carolina State University argues:

e was E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''e'' (pronounced ); plura ...
a conservative, proslavery interpreter of slavery and the slaves ... In ''Life and Labor in the Old South'' Phillips failed to revise his interpretation of slavery significantly. His basic arguments—the duality of slavery as an economic cancer but a vital mode of racial control—can be traced back to his earliest writings. Less detailed but more elegantly written than ''American Negro Slavery,'' Phillips's ''Life and Labor'' was a general synthesis rather than a monograph. His racism appeared less pronounced in ''Life and Labor'' because of its broad scope. Fewer racial slurs appeared in 1929 than in 1918, but Phillips's prejudice remained. The success of ''Life and Labor'' earned Phillips the year-long Albert Kahn Foundation Fellowship in 1929-30 to observe blacks and other laborers worldwide. In 1929 Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, appointed Phillips professor of history.

Phillips contended that masters treated slaves relatively well. His views were rejected most sharply by

Kenneth M. Stampp Kenneth Milton Stampp (12 July 191210 July 2009), Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley (1946–1983), was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstr ...

in the 1950s. However, to a large degree Phillips' interpretive model of the dynamic between master and slave was revived by

Eugene Genovese Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and s ...

, who wrote that Phillips's "work, taken as a whole, remains the best and most subtle introduction to antebellum Southern history and especially to the problems posed by race and class." In 1963, C. Vann Woodward wrote: "Much of what Phillips wrote has not been superseded or seriously challenged and remains indispensable." Phillips denied he was proslavery. He was an intellectual leader of the

Progressive Movement Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techno ...

and slavery, in his interpretation, was inefficient and antithetical to the principles of progressivism. Phillips (1910) explained in detail why slavery was a failed system. It is Smith's opinion that:

Phillips's contributions to the study of slavery clearly outweigh his deficiencies. Neither saint nor sinner, he was subject to the same forces-- bias, selectivity of evidence, inaccuracy--that plague us all. Descended from slave owners and reared in the rural South, he dominated slave historiography in an era when Progressivism was literally for whites only. Of all scholars, historians can ill afford to be anachronistic. Phillips was no more a believer in white supremacy than other leading contemporary white scholars.

W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...

criticized Phillips's 1918 book American Negro Slavery, writing that it was a "defense of American slavery" and that Phillips engaged in the special pleading fallacy.

Race as "central theme" of southern U.S. history

In "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928), Phillips maintained that the desire to keep their region "a white man's country" united the white southerners for centuries. Phillips' emphasis on race was overshadowed in the late 1920s and 1930s by the Beardian interpretation of

Charles A. Beard Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948) was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the f ...

and

Mary Ritter Beard Mary Ritter Beard (August 5, 1876 – August 14, 1958) was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was a ...

, who in their enormously successful ''The Rise of American Civilization'' (1927) emphasized class conflict and downplayed slavery and race relations as a cause of the

. By the 1950s, however, the Beardian

economic determinism Economic determinism is a socioeconomic theory that economic relationships (such as being an owner or capitalist, or being a worker or proletarian) are the foundation upon which all other societal and political arrangements in society are based. ...

was out of fashion, and the emphasis on race (rather than region or class) became a major topic in historiography. By 2000, Jane Dailey,

Glenda Gilmore Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore is an American historian of the American South at Yale University. She is the author of many publications, including "These United States: A Nation in the Making 1890 to Present" (2015), "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and th ...

, and Bryant Simon argue by citing Phillips:

The ways in which white southerners "met" the race "problem" have intrigued historians writing about post-Civil War southern politics since at least 1928, when Ulrich B. Phillips pronounced race relations the "central theme" of southern history. What contemporaries referred to as "the race question" may be phrased more bluntly today as the struggle for white domination. Establishing and maintaining this domination--creating the system of racial segregation and African American disfranchisement known as Jim Crow--has remained a preoccupation of southern historians.

In his review of ''Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery'' by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, the historian

Ira Berlin Ira Berlin (May 27, 1941 – June 5, 2018) was an American historian, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and former president of Organization of American Historians. Berlin is the author of such books as ''Many Thousands Gone: T ...

wrote, "Slavery in the North, like its counterpart in the South, was a brutal, violent relationship that fostered white supremacy. ''Complicitys authors shred the notion, famously advanced by the Yale historian U.B. Phillips, that the central theme of Southern history was the region's desire to remain a white man's country. Phillips was not so much wrong about the centrality of white supremacy to the South as blind to its presence in the North."

Works

For a comprehensive annotated guide see Fred Landon and Everett E. Edwards, "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," (1934).Fred Landon and Everett E. Edwards, "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," ''Agricultural History'' 8#4 (1934), pp. 196-21
in JSTOR
/ref> * ''Georgia and State Rights: A Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations.'' American Historical Association Report for the Year 1901, Vol. 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902, his dissertation, earned him the Justin Winsor Prize awarded by the

(reprint 1983
online edition
* ''A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860''. (1908)
online edition
* ''The Life of Robert Toombs''. (1913)
online edition
* ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime''. (1918; reprint 196
online at Project Gutenbergonline at Internet Archive
* ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. (1929).
excerpts and text search
* ''The Course of the South to Secession: An Interpretation''. (1939).

Works edited by Phillips

* ''Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources.'' 2 Volumes. (1909)
vol 1&2 online edition
* ''The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb''. ''Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911,'' Vol. 2. Washington: 1913. * ''Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones.'' (coedited with James D. Glunt). (1927).

Major articles by Ulrich B. Phillips

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * "Calhoun, John Caldwell, 1782 - 1850" ''Dictionary of American Biography'' (1929) 3:411-419; 7400 words * *

References

Bibliography

* Dillon, Merton Lynn. ''Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: Historian of the Old South'' (1985), biography. * Fogel, Robert William, and Engerman, Stanley L. ''

Time on the Cross ''Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'' (1974) is a book by the economists Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Fogel and Engerman argued that slavery was an economically rational institution and that the economic exploitat ...

: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'', (1974), 1995 reissue, New York: Norton, . * Fogel, Robert William. ''The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective'' Louisiana State University Press, 2003. , chapter 1. *

Genovese, Eugene D. Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and s ...

"Race and Class in Southern History: An Appraisal of the Work of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 345-358
in JSTOR
* Genovese, Eugene D. "Ulrich Bonnell Phillips & His Critics." ntroduction toUlrich Bonnell Phillips. ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime'' Louisiana State University Press, 1966, pages vii-xxi. * Hofstadter Richard. "U.B. Phillips and the Plantation Legend." ''Journal of Negro History'', 29 (April, 1944): 109-124
in JSTOR
* Kugler, Ruben F. "U.B. Phillips' Use of Sources." ''Journal of Negro History'', 47 (July, 1962): 153-168
in JSTOR
* Landon, Fred, and Everett E. Edwards. "A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips," ''Agricultural History,'' Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1934), pp. 196–21
in JSTOR
* Parish, Peter J. ''Slavery: history and historians'' (2nd. ed. 1990) * Potter, David M. "The Work of Ulrich B. Phillips: A Comment." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 359-363
in JSTOR
* Pressly, Thomas J. "Ulrich B. Phillips." In ''Americans Interpret Their Civil War'' (Princeton University Press, 1962), pages 265-272. *

Roper, John Herbert John Herbert Roper Sr. (born August 9, 1948) is an American historian. The University of North Carolina has a collection of his papers. He was born in South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a B.A., received an M. ...

. ''U.B. Phillips: A Southern Mind'' Mercer University Press, 1984. * Singal, Daniel Joseph. "Ulrich B. Phillips: The Old South as the New," ''Journal of American History'', 63 (March, 1977): 871-891
in JSTOR
* Smith, John David. ''An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918'' Greenwood Press, 1985, Chapter 8. * Smith, John David; and John C. Inscoe eds; ''Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics'' (1990
online
essays by leading scholars, pro and con * Smith, John David. "Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934)" in ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia'' (2003
online version
* Smith, John David. ''Slavery, Race and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends and Method, 1866-1953'' (1999) * Smith, John David. "U. B. Phillips, the North Carolina State Literary and Historical Association, and the Course of the South to Secession," ''North Carolina Historical Review,'' (2010) 87#3 pp 253–282 * Stampp Kenneth M. "Reconsidering U.B. Phillips: A Comment." ''Agricultural History,'' 41 (October, 1967): 365-368
in JSTOR
* Stampp Kenneth M. "The Historian and Southern Negro Slavery." ''American Historical Review'', 57 (April, 1952): 613-624
in JSTOR
*Stephenson Wendell H. "Ulrich B. Phillips: Historian of Aristocracy." in ''The South Lives in History: Southern Historians and Their Legacy'' Louisiana State University Press, 1955, pages 58–94. * Tindall George B. "The Central Theme Revisited." In Charles G. Sellers Jr., ed. ''The Southerner as American'' University of North Carolina Press, 1960, pages 104-129. * Wish Harvey. "Ulrich B. Phillips and the Image of the Old South." in Wish, ''The American Historian: A Social-Intellectual History of the Writing of the American Past'' Oxford University Press, 1960, pp. 236–264. * Wood, Kirk. "Ulrich B. Phillips." In Clyde N. Wilson, ed. ''Dictionary of Literary Biography, Twentieth-Century American Historians.'' Gale Research, 1983, pages 350-363. * Woodward C. Vann. "Introduction" in Ulrich B. Phillips. ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963, pages iii-vi.

External links

* *
Biography
* Ulrich Bonnell Phillips papers (MS 397). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

{{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell 1877 births 1934 deaths People from Troup County, Georgia Historians of the Southern United States Historians of the United States Deaths from esophageal cancer University of Georgia alumni Yale University faculty Deaths from cancer in Connecticut University of Michigan faculty Dunning School Historians from Georgia (U.S. state)