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The Great Debate in Richmond
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
After the twelve Southern contributors to the Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, had submitted their completed manuscript to Harper's in the late summer of 1930, they eagerly looked forward to the American public's reaction to their book, which the Saturday Review would call “the most challenging book published in the United States since [Henry] George's Progress and Poverty” and the “most audacious book ever written by Southerners.” In the meantime, they devised plans of a practical sort that might implement their theoretical statement, such as founding a Southern academy that would have a complete philosophical constitution and an organized program of publication to spread Agrarian ideas. The twelve Southerners also considered establishing a Southern magazine associated with a publishing house and a chain of book stores, purchasing and editing a Tennessee county newspaper, securing foundation funds to support their programs, and possibly even developing a political force by either winning Democratic party support, or uniting with Western agricultural interests.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978
References
NOTES
1. Knickerbocker, W. S., “Back to the Hand,” Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (12 20, 1930), 467–68.Google Scholar
2. Interview of September 8, 1957, cited in Rock, Virginia, “The Making and Meaning of I'll Take My Stand,” Diss., Univ. of Minnesota 1961, p. 233.Google Scholar
3. Barr, Stringfellow, “Shall Slavery Come South?” Virginia Quarterly Review, 6 (10 1930), 481–94.Google Scholar
4. Letter, Davis, to Davidson, , 09 27, 1930.Google Scholar All unpublished papers and correspondence cited are found in the Fugitive collection at Vanderbilt University, Joint Universities Library.
5. From a typed copy with penned revisions, undated, among the papers in the Fugitive collection. Excerpts, with some editing, were published in the news story on the debate in the Richmond, Times-Dispatch, 11 14, 1930.Google Scholar
6. News story in Times-Dispatch, 11 13, 1930.Google Scholar
7. Davidson, Donald, “Whither Dixie?—Mr. Barr and Mr. Ransom in the Great Debate at Richmond,”Google ScholarChattanooga, News, 11 22, 1930, p. 25.Google Scholar This news article is the fullest account of the debate published, and my account relies heavily upon it and the following: Davidson, Donald, “3,500 Pack Hall as Ransom, Barr Debate Southern Problems,”Google ScholarChattanooga, News, 11 15, 1930, p. 11Google Scholar; “Dr. Ransom Charges Barr's ‘Regulated’ Industrialism Would End in Communism,” Richmond, Times-Dispatch, 11 15, 1930, pp. 1, 2Google Scholar; Editorial, “The Barr-Ransom Debate,” Richmond, Times-Dispatch, 11 16, 1930Google Scholar, section II, p. 2. According to letters to Davidson from Allen Cleaton dated December 6 and 30, 1930, and January 13, 1931, a court stenographer was hired by the newspaper to prepare a transcript of the debate for publication in pamphlet form. Barr, however, objected as he found the transcript jumbled, so the plan was abandoned. Cleaton indicated that he would preserve the transcript and send typed copies to Davidson, but my research so far has failed to turn up a copy either among Davidson's papers or the files of the Times-Dispatch. I have also consulted Davidson's pencil notes made during the debate and used in his news stories cited above.
8. Rock, , “The Making and Meaning of I'll Take My Stand,” p. 356, n. 1.Google Scholar