Through the use of emerging technology help them build their point, William Thomas III and Edward Ayers combine the desire to shift focus on the mindset of Antebellum America away from a stark, fundamental difference with the desire to create a new form within scholarship itself. The discussion is often problematic, with focus on how to insert hyperlinks taking precedent over the fusion of ideas, but the concept is an interesting one. Thomas and Ayers discuss two towns- Augusta, Virginia and Franklin, Pennsylvania- in the center of the argument in order to both decentralize the importance of slavery in the Civil War and to show that the use of slavery was not necessarily simply a stepping stone to modernity.
In regards to their use of technology, it does provide for an interesting idea and makes me question what form the future of scholarship will take. Instead of simply using footnotes as a traditional essay would, Thomas and Ayers created hyperlinks to summaries of other essays, tables and other sources in order to make their use of sources fully transparent. With this form, the boldness of primary sources does not necessarily have to be lost with a simple summary or reference. This becomes problematic in the summary of argument prior to the case study itself. Four of nine sections become focused on the ideas of other historians, and while it is not necessarily a bad idea to define one’s terms, there is no integration of ideas with their argument, instead it is a simple summary of points rather than a use of them.
Once they begin their argument itself, Thomas and Ayers focus on different social and economic aspects to prove that the South and the North were not always as clearly distinct as Charleston and Boston. Both towns were wealthy, and through the planting of many crops, not just cotton, Augusta utilized both slavery and modern technology. Of course, their economic system was not necessarily as advanced, technically speaking, as a factory-based town, but the use of railroads shows that they were not cut off from the non-agricultural world. Franklin, by contrast, was a more profitable farming town even without the use of slaves. The social structures and culture were more or less the same in both towns, and the technology they chose was quite similar. Through all of this, both towns retained the essential fundamentalist ideas of the main differences between North and South while still being remarkably similar in other aspects.
This argument and its structure is simultaneously fascinating and a cause for concern. I am very much against the idea that such large portions of the nation were so sharply divided in all aspects as fundamentalists seem to believe. Thus, I find this essay, with all its faults, quite a compelling argument, but one which could have been fleshed out a bit more in order to integrate the ideas of other historians with their own rather than trying to stand alone against the fundamentalists.