Citation

Hartman DA. J. Abnorm. Psychol. Soc. Psychology 1922; 17(3): 261-273.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1922, R.G. Badger)

DOI

10.1037/h0067464

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

There has developed within recent years an increased interest in the application of psychology to history, a demand for a greater co-operation voiced by both the historian and the psychologist. It would be difficult to find in history a problem more interesting from the psychological point of view than the development of the attitude of the South toward slavery from 1830 to the outbreak of the war. The conflict in the South between the economic drive of the growing profit of cotton and the dawning realization of the moral evil and danger of slavery, demanded a solution. The solution of this conflict by the South was the building up of a defence mechanism, a social phenomenon worthy of the study of both the historian and the psychologist. A common form of defence mechanism is termed rationalization. The attitude that slavery was sanctioned by God was gradually developed. The second form of defence closely resembles projection. The South defended itself from the idea of its own moral conditions by hunting out those of the North. When the critical point of actual secession came, the South was forced to develop another rationalization, the Calhoun doctrine. While the conflict lasted, and for many years afterwards, the more basic reason, the supposed profit of slavery on the part of the South and the demand for free western lands by the North, dropped into the background so far as public propaganda and popular history were concerned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)