Starvin Larry

by Al Benson Jr.
A book review of Walter Kirk Wood’s Beyond Slavery

Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina continues to turn out cutting edge books, both large and small that deal with subjects the establishment press would rather leave untouched.

This slim volume by Walter Kirk Wood, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina is the precursor to a three volume work to be entitled Beyond Slavery: A New History for a New Nation and the Northern Romantic-Nationalist Origins of America’s Civil War, 1776-1865.

Dr. Wood covers material in this little book that I have seldom seen anywhere else. Dr. Clyde Wilson, in a brief forward, notes the main thrust of Dr. Wood’s work. Of Dr. Wood he says: “He will show how the war became inevitable only because Northern society was infected by the revolutionary romantic nationalism that rocked Europe in the mid-19th century…