A Class by Themselves: The Untold Story of the Great Southern Families

Dust jacket notes: "'I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.' Thus spoke John Randolph of Roanoke, the great Southern politician who punctuated his remarks in Congress with a whip in his hand. Randolph and his fellow Southern aristocrats had no equals - in their fabled plantation life-style, in their epic love affairs, and in their passionate devotion to their homeland. With the skill of an engaging storyteller, William Stadiem, in A Class by Themselves, has produced a remarkable blend of historical facts and personal anecdotes. Writing in a rich, descriptive style, he captures the special ambience of the South and uses it as a framework within which to develop this ambitious work of social history that highlights the private lives of the most interesting and most infuential Southerners, truly a class by themselves. Spanning three centuries, including the present, A Class by Themselves contrasts the genteel, quasi-European old South in the decades preceding the Civil War with the rough-hewn, industrial New South of the postwar years, emphasizing the difficulties faced by the New South and the pretensions it affected as it tried to emulate the past glory of the original founding families. The lure of romance, the arrogance of success, the taint of scandal, and the pathos of decline are only some of the threads with which the author weaves the stories of these prominent dynasties. Mr. Stadiem creates a series of fascinating portraits of aristocratic personalities, including the Dukes and the Reynoldses, who rose from poverty to command two of the largest tobacco empires; William Byrd II of Westover; Irene Langhorne Gibson, wife of society artist Charles Dana Gibson and model for the 'Gibson Girl'; Senator Judah P. Benjamin; Sarah and Angelina Grimke; Lady Nancy Langhorne Astor; and Ward McAllister...."