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Owen Edwards's avatar

Two stray notes. Randolph suspected soil erosion issues were really regional. It's part of why he saw slavery withering in the Upper South as it already was above the Potomac - Virginian soil was only deep on the Lower Tidewater and even there profit was marginal.

He also thought changes to entailment were big in Virginian farmers moving - he ended up seeing entailment reform as a bigger disaster than soil erosion, pretty much.

Re Berry, I think he's carefully carving out a way to be Southern that gives the lesson to the Gentiles without the baggage. Success is disputable. (His point on race specifically is I think partly explained elsewhere by his concern about integrating the racial traditions of the South - the same project you see in Genovese, Walker Percy, and Welty.)

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Chase's avatar

Yep, I read hundreds of pages on soil erosion but there's so much on the subject. Re Berry, I agree and is a longer conversation. I just wanted to throw in some some salt to counter balance all sugar written about him.

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Owen Edwards's avatar

Yes, I love Berry but him being the Acceptable Agrarian is a little too much some days!

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