Volume 13, Number 10 · December 4, 1969
W.J. Cash Reconsidered
By C. Vann Woodward
Time has dealt gently and critics generously with W. J. Cash and his book, The Mind of the South.[1] A non-academic and a non-professional historian, he has been spared the rivalries and exempted from the standards of the schools and the professionals. His license as a free lance helped him earn a charmed immunity. Scholars often quote him unjealously and flatteringly with a freedom they normally begrudge their fellow academicians. His early and tragic death by suicide following so closely on the publication of his book probably discouraged rigorous reappraisals. There were only two hostile reviews and the author of one of them, Donald Davidson, publicly lamented that the news of Cash's death came too late to enable him to cancel publication of the review.
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