James C. Cobb is better qualified than most to reflect upon what constitutes southern identity. A Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia and a former president of the Southern Historical Association, Cobb has devoted much of his life to such questions. As a schoolboy Cobb sang “Dixie” with the rest of his class, but wondered “why we were saying ‘away down South’ when we were already in Georgia” (1). Cobb’s original plan for the book was a survey of American attitudes toward the South from 1941, when W.J. Cash’s vituperative Mind of the South was published, venting bile at the perceived inequities of the region, just as H.L. Mencken had poured scorn on its perceived idiocies. What emerges from Cobb’s attempt is something far more comprehensive, however, stretching back to the foundations of the United States, and asking broad questions about the very concept of identity, as well as its application to the South. By his own admission, this book “is a history rather than the history of southern identity,” (8). It may also reflect the author’s own quest for identity. In the words of William Faulkner, “it is himself that every Southerner writes about” (337).

The study of southern identity is a well-established field; Away Down South soars above standard on most counts, but still falls to some of the pitfalls of the genre. In view of its stated aim “to come to terms with the South’s role as both a real and imagined cultural entity separate and distinct from the rest of the country” (8) Cobb’s book both excels and, to some extent, disappoints.

Cobb skirts some problems in defining and discussing southern identity. Religion is discussed more as a function of southern society than as an animating spirit capable of both of justifying slavery and compelling the Civil Rights movement. As grievously perhaps, Cobb over-identifies the South with the former Confederate States, neglecting those slaveholding border-states that remained within the Union, but were nevertheless products of southern culture. Missouri is omitted; Kentucky gets only passing reference. The “Lost Cause” that sustained former rebels in opposition to Reconstruction lingers to this day, as much in the “upper South” as in the “Deep South.” Cobb notes this paradox in relation to Kentucky, a state divided by the presence of slavery, which remained in the Union, but from which many flocked to Confederate colours. Respectable journals in well-heeled towns such as Louisville pushed defiant rhetoric: “survivors of the lost cause… can least afford to be silent” (101). Despite shadows cast by the South’s fringes, Cobb is evasive of their place in the general discussion. Even stranger is the omission of West Virginia - a corner of the South that seceded from Secession. Cobb fails here to explore how regional identity is forged most keenly at the frontiers.

Away Down South is an entertaining read, in spite of my criticisms of its content. Cobb writes elegantly, with an ear for anecdote. His book has significant strengths and demonstrates the ambivalence of identity itself. In the context of globalization, this ambivalence assumes great irony, such as the adoption of the Confederate flag by disgruntled Sicilian regionalists (Italy being a country with its own North-South divide) (329). Cobb further recognizes, along with Howard Zinn, that “qualities long attributed to the South as special possessions are, in truth, American qualities,” often exposing the prejudices of those who define them (326). Away Down South comes into its own as a reflection on America in the world, and the South as a mirror to America. As a historical survey, however, it is uneven - stronger on recent history than on the more distant past.