In recent decades Howard White has been an outstanding Southern writer in quantity and quality. His work of great and often unique contributions to Southern history has been insufficiently recognised– perhaps because he was never a begowned academic. He was a very successful chemical engineer who turned to history on retirement. Perhaps lack of sufficient recognition is also somewhat due to him privately publishing and marketing his own works.
White was born and raised in Nashville, TN, and did undergrad study at Vanderbilt University. On retirement he settled in Charlotte and devoted himself to history. His first contribution was over 100 public access broadcasts, with presentations and interviews about the War for Southern Independence. Let us hope those have been preserved somewhere.
In my opinion, the finest of White’s many books is How Southern Families Created America. The movement and settlement of Southern families from the Atlantic to Texas over three centuries was by far the most important element in creating America. White in all his work always has a positive view of the Southern people—our past and future. His writing is good history but its overall impact amounts to a Southern morale booster. And he always understands that black people are a part of the South.
Bloodstains: An Epic History of the Politics that Produced and Sustained the American Civil War is made up of four very thick volumes. White never treats just the War. He writes always the history of 19th century America, how the War came on and its consequences—the 1850s through the 1870s, sometimes ever further at both ends. There is vast detail, much of it ignored by other Civil War historians, but the detail amounts to a comprehensive presentation and interpretation of the central happening of U.S. history. The work is vol. 1, The Nation Builders; 2, The Demagogues; 3, The Bleeding; 4, Political Reconstruction and the Struggle for Healing.
You can get a taste of the whole work from a series of pamphlets: Abe Lincoln’s First Shot Strategy; another analyzing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; and How to Study History When Seeking Truthfulness and Understanding. Or get a good taste of White’s historical style with a look at his book Rebirthing Lincoln, which I reviewed on this site October 27.
In 2013 Howard White and Yours Truly founded the Society of Independent Southern Historians. For years we ran a website presenting a large guide to Southern writing. We published, edited by White and I, Understanding the War Between the States. This contained 40 articles by 16 experts on various aspects of the War. This is still, I think, a very valuable work. A homeschool version followed. A good many people signed up as members. Howard and I are well into our eighties and can no longer sustain SISH. We were unable to find any younger person to take over the direction and the organisation has lapsed. Alas, Southerners are often lazier than Yankees.
Then followed an astounding transition of our historian’s talent and understanding into fiction. Suppose we had won the war for independence? In The CSA Trilogy: An Alternate History/Historical Novel about Our Vast and Beautiful Confederate States of America, White tells a happy story of what might have been, from 1861—1911. We are a respected country of free and prosperous people. We enjoy progress and multiculturalism in a healthy sense of those conditions. The story is worked out with many characters and a wealth of imaginative detail. A delightful and consoling read.
More fiction followed: R.E. Lee, Edmund Ruffin, and Slavery. Despite the title, this is essentially a story of how a Virginia slave family learned to tell their real friends from their pretended friends.
White then turned to family history: Remembering While We Still Can, a Southern family memoir, coauthored by Howard’s charming and musical wife, Judith Willis White. Also Understanding Granddad Through his Poetry, a collection of verse written by John Andrew White (1874-1951). John White was a school administrator. His poetry can be quite good at times, centering on his home territory.
We must note two more books by our author, which are not Southern in topic: Understanding Creation and Evolution, a quite effective Christian approach to Darwinism. And his most recent, an account of historical achievement in the field of Transportation, with the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, and Elon Musk.
Let’s honour merit when merit is due.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
