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Revisionism got started in the South shortly after the war (or even while the war was in its closing phases). Slavery came to be regarded as morally indefensible, so one had to claim that something else had made secession and war possible.

Revisionism caught on in the rest of the country in the 1910s. The generation that fought the war was passing away. And the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson were becoming the more liberal and progressive party. In fact, they were becoming the party of the professors.

Progressive historians like Beard were drawn to the Old South as an agrarian region that shared their opposition to industrial capitalism and the Republican party which supported it, so they started to downplay slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts. I don't want to go the whole Dinesh D'Souza route, but Northern progressives and Southern segregationists had much in common from the 1910s through the 1940s (and in some ways even later).

They both disliked Northern corporations and capitalists and the Republican Party. They both looked to a more powerful federal government that would take on the powerful industrial and financial interests of the North and East. And they both (like the rest of country) thought that Republican Reconstruction had been a failure and (partially or entirely) a mistake.

I know less about Genovese. It looks to me like he was attracted to the Old South when he was a Marxist because it seemed like an alternative to the capitalist system that he hated. Historians still argue about the degree to which the Old South did represent a paternalistic, non-capitalist alternative to modernity.

Certainly, slaveowners were involved in market relations, buying and selling, but that's been going on since long before modern capitalism. Books like Genovese's, though, might give clues as to why most Southerners, including most planters and most political leaders weren't likely to think that their future lay with industrialization.

What's missing from the arguments you see here are psychology and culture. People aren't always wholly rational economic beings, and they don't operate in a purely economic framework, unaffected by ideas or their daily environment.

x referring to my post #553 on Charles Beard: "Revisionism got started in the South shortly after the war (or even while the war was in its closing phases).
Slavery came to be regarded as morally indefensible, so one had to claim that something else had made secession and war possible.
"Revisionism caught on in the rest of the country in the 1910s.
The generation that fought the war was passing away.
And the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson were becoming the more liberal and progressive party.
In fact, they were becoming the party of the professors.

"Progressive historians like Beard were drawn to the Old South as an agrarian region that shared their opposition to industrial capitalism and the Republican party which supported it, so they started to downplay slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts.
I don't want to go the whole Dinesh D'Souza route..."

I'm a D'Souza fan, I like his "route".

Thanks for another great post, I recommend it to all following this thread.

Republican party which supported it, so they started to downplay slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts.

What was slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts?

Which is a position that I have been slowly coming around to in the last three years. Not just the North East nowadays. I am also quite alarmed about the outright Fascism and Tyranny coming out of the Tech Oligarchs in San Fransisco.

What do you think about these powerful corporations and their tendency to censor speech they don't like?