Strictly, the Southerner had no mind; he had temperament. He was not a scholar; he had no intellectual training; he could not analyze an idea, and he could not even conceive of admitting two. This judgment, rendered in "The Education of Henry Adams," may be the most quoted of Adams s writings on the South. However, it is far from the only one of his beliefs that helped to shape a national outlook on the region from the late antebellum period to the present.
Thinking about the South, says Michael O Brien, was part of being an Adams. In this book O Brien shows how Adams (grandson of...
Strictly, the Southerner had no mind; he had temperament. He was not a scholar; he had no intellectual training; he could not analyze an idea, and...