Sound Ideas

Title

Yankee She-Men and Octoroon Electra: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve on Slavery, Race, and Abolition

Authors

David Lupher, University of Puget SoundFollow
Elizabeth Vandiver

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2011

Publication Title

Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood

Department

Classics

Abstract

This chapter discusses the writings of the eminent 19th-century American classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, founder of the first graduate program in classics in the United States and apologist for the Southern cause during the American Civil War. The chapter surveys Gildersleeve’s use of classics as exempla in his polemical and apologetic writings on the South and his use of the South as an exemplum in his writings on classics. It discusses the comparisons that Gildersleeve explicitly drew between the Peloponnesian War and the Civil War, and examines the wider connections between his pro-Southern writings and his classical scholarship, focusing on his views on slavery, abolition, and the Old South. The chapter pays particular attention to Gildersleeve’s writings on miscegenation and his scorn for the egalitarian views expressed in the famous abolitionist “man and brother” motto.

Comments

WorldCat link for full book:

http://pugetsound.worldcat.org/oclc/707266093

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574674.003.0011

WorldCat Link

http://worldcat.org/oclc/5105307797

Provider Link

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574674.001.0001/acprof-9780199574674-chapter-11

Citation

“Yankee She-Men and Octoroon Electra: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve on Slavery, Race, and Abolition,” co-authored with Elizabeth Vandiver, Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood. Edith Hall, Richard Alston, and Justine McConnell, eds. Oxford University Press, 2011.