Normans and Saxons

When a Representative of South Carolina savagely caned a Senator on the floor of the U.S. Senate on May 21, 1856, southerners viewed the attack as an affirmation of southern chivalry and northerners a confirmation of southern barbarity. Public opinion was similarly divided following abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, with northerners crowning Brown a martyr to the cause of freedom and southerners excoriated him as a consciousness fanatic. These events opened American minds to the possibility that North and South might be incompatible societies. Some of Dixie's defenders went one step further, proposing that southerners and northerners were not just a "divided people" but two scientifically distinct races, Normans and Saxons respectively. NORMANS AND SAXONS explores the complex racial mythology created by the upper classes of the antebellum South in the wake of these divisive events to justify secession and, eventually, the Civil War.Watson, Ritchie Devon, Jr. is the author of 'Normans and Saxons', published 2008 under ISBN 9780807133125 and ISBN 0807133124.