Few historians have left their mark on a field as decisively as Eugene D. Genovese. The shape of southern history, particularly slavery studies, would look rather different without his substantial corpus. Debates in southern history continue to be framed around the issues first raised or developed by Genovese in his early work on the Old South and slavery. More than any other historian of slavery, he has set the agenda for antebellum southern historiography and bears responsibility for both its strengths and its limitations. Writing from the standpoint of an odd ideological conjuncture—as a self-professed Marxist and an unabashed admirer of southern slaveholders—Genovese’s Janus-faced political loyalties, to use a metaphor he himself has employed, have shaped his work. In this article, I will critically examine the import and influence of his vast scholarship in nineteenth-century southern history, especially of his most significant book, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974).