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mic hael f. con li n The Dangerous Isms and the Fanatical Ists Antebellum Conservatives in the South and the North Confront the Modernity Conspiracy Conservatives in the South and the North regarded the abolitionist attack on slavery as part of a greater modernist attack on traditional American val- ues. They believed the United States in general and the South in particular were under ideological siege by the dangerous isms—usually italicized, to emphasize their threat. Ranging from planters, theologians, and lawyers in the South to yeomen, mechanics, and merchants in the North, they feared that the North was under attack by a phalanx of dangerous ideas and that the South had to defend itself or conservatives would have to fi ght a two- front war to protect the United States from what Massachusetts Democrat Benjamin F. Hallett called the “whole band of isms.” These spanned from religion to politics, economics to literature, and race relations to domes- tic arrangements. In a breathless rant, a Natchez physician ticked off the “kindred isms” that imperiled the United States: “Mormonism, Millerism, Transcendentalism, Teetotalism, Free Lovism, Socialism, Naturalism, [and, of course,] Abolitionism.” Taking a deep breath, the American Whig Review calmly observed that
The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press
Published: May 2, 2014
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