Two Paths to The New South
Two Paths to The New South

Author: James Tice Moore

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0813194814

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the grim decades after the Civil War, Southerners dreamed of industrial growth and agricultural diversification. In this study, Mr. Moore traces the development and changes that took place in the Old Dominion during these troubled postbellum years. The state's massive debt burden touched off an upheaval, splintering the electorate into competing Funder and Readjuster factions. The Funders, composed largely of the conservative farmers of eastern Virginia and the commercial classes of the towns, were committed to pay off Virginia's prewar debt in full. The Readjusters, drawing their support from the fringe elements of society, sought a more realistic, downward adjustment of the debt.

"Origins of the New South" Fifty Years Later

Author: John B. Boles

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2003-10-31

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780807129203

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this thoughtful, sophisticated book, John B. Boles and Bethany L. Johnson piece together the intricate story of historian C. Vann Woodward’s 1951 masterpiece, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, published as Volume IX of LSU Press’s venerable series A History of the South. Sixteen reviews and articles by prominent southern historians of the past fifty years here offer close consideration of the creation, reception, and enduring influence of that classic work of history. It is rare for an academic book to dominate its field half a century later as Woodward’s Origins does southern history. Although its explanations are not accepted by all, the volume remains the starting point for every work examining the South in the era between Reconstruction and World War I. In writing Origins, Woodward deliberately set out to subvert much of the historical orthodoxy he had been taught during the 1930s, and he expected to be lambasted. But the revisionist movement was already afoot among white southern historians by 1951 and the book was hailed. Woodward’s work had an enormous interpretative impact on the historical academy and encapsulated the new trend of historiography of the American South, an approach that guided both black and white scholars through the civil rights movement and beyond. This easily accessible collection comprises four reviews of Origins from 1952 to 1978; “Origin of Origins,” a chapter from Woodward’s 1986 book Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History that explains and reconsiders the context in which Origins was written; five articles from a fiftieth anniversary retrospective symposium on Origins; and three commentaries presented at the symposium and here published for the first time. A combination of trenchant commentary and recent reflections on Woodward’s seminal study along with insight into Woodward as a teacher and scholar, Fifty Years Later in effect traces the creation and development of the modern field of southern history.

A Saga of the New South
A Saga of the New South

Author: Brent Tarter

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2016-07-11

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0813938767

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the lead-up to the Civil War, Virginia, like other southern states, amassed a large public debt while striving to improve transportation infrastructure and stimulate economic development. A Saga of the New South delves into the largely untold story of the decades-long postwar controversies over the repayment of that debt. The result is a major reinterpretation of late-nineteenth-century Virginia political history. The post–Civil War public debt controversy in Virginia reshaped the state’s political landscape twice. First it created the conditions under which the Readjuster Party, a biracial coalition of radical reformers, seized control of the state government in 1879 and successfully refinanced the debt; then it gave rise to a counterrevolution that led the elitist Democratic Party to eighty years of dominance in the state's politics. Despite the Readjusters’ victory in refinancing the debt and their increased spending for the popular new system of free public schools, the debt controversy generated a long train of legal disputes—at least eighty-five cases reached the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, and twenty-nine reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Through an in-depth look at these political and legal contests, A Saga of the New South sheds new light on the many obstacles that reformers faced in Virginia and the South after the Civil War.

Iron Confederacies
Iron Confederacies

Author: Scott Reynolds Nelson

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2005-10-12

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0807876100

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson. Iron Confederacies uses the history of southern railways to explore linkages among the themes of states' rights, racial violence, labor strife, and big business in the nineteenth-century South. By 1868, Ku Klux Klan leaders had begun mobilizing white resentment against rapid economic change by asserting that railroad consolidation led to political corruption and black economic success. As Nelson notes, some of the Klan's most violent activity was concentrated along the Richmond-Atlanta rail corridor. But conflicts over railroads were eventually resolved, he argues, in agreements between northern railroad barons and Klan leaders that allowed white terrorism against black voters while surrendering states' control over the southern economy.

Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South
Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South

Author: Rebecca S. Montgomery

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2018-12-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0807170518

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South follows a Civil War orphan’s transformation from a Southside Virginia public school teacher to a nationally known progressive educator and feminist. In this vital intellectual biography, Rebecca S. Montgomery places feminism and gender at the center of her analysis and offers a new look at the postbellum movement for southern educational reform through the life of Celeste Parrish. Because Parrish’s life coincided with critical years in the destruction and reconstruction of the southern social order, her biography provides unique opportunities to explore the links between southern nationalism, reactionary racism, and gender discrimination. Parrish’s pursuit of higher education and a professional career pitted her against male opponents of coeducation who regarded female and black dependency as central to southern regional distinctiveness. When coupled with women’s lack of formal political power, this resistance to gender equality discouraged progress and lowered the quality of public education throughout the South. The marginalization of women within the reform movement, headed by the Conference for Education in the South, further limited women’s contributions to regional change. Although men welcomed female participation in grassroots organization, much of women’s work was segregated in female networks and received less public acknowledgement than the reform work conducted by men. Despite receiving little credit for their accomplishments, by working on the margins, women were able to use the southern movement and its philanthropic sponsors as alternate sources of influence and power. By exploring the consequences of gender discrimination for both educational reform and the influence of southern progressivism, Rebecca S. Montgomery contributes a nuanced understanding of how interlocking hierarchies of power structured opportunity and influenced the shape of reform in the U.S. South.

Two Paths
Two Paths

Author: John Kasich

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781427292018

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Two paths. One choice?the path that exploits anger, encourages resentment, turns fear into hatred and divides people. This path solves nothing, demeans our history, weakens our country and cheapens each of us. It has but one beneficiary and that is to the politician who speaks of it. The other path is the one America has been down before. It is well-trod, it is at times steep, but it is solid. It is the same path our forebears took together. It is from this higher path that we are offered the greater view. And, imagine for a moment with me that view. Fear turns to hope because we remember to take strength from each other. Uncertainty turns to peace because we reclaim our faith in the American ideals that have carried us upward before. And America's supposed decline becomes its finest hour, because we came together to say "no" to those who would prey on our human weakness and instead chose leadership that serves, helping us look up, not down. This is the path I believe in. This is the America I believe in. And, this is the America I know all Americans want us to be. Please, join me on this higher path. Together, united, we can reclaim the America we love and hold so dear. And lift all of us up to partake in its, and the Lord's, many blessings. In Two Paths, Ohio Governor John Kasich leads America toward a brighter, more hopeful future.

Cities of the Dead
Cities of the Dead

Author: William A. Blair

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011-01-20

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0807876232

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Exploring the history of Civil War commemorations from both sides of the color line, William Blair places the development of memorial holidays, Emancipation Day celebrations, and other remembrances in the context of Reconstruction politics and race relations in the South. His grassroots examination of these civic rituals demonstrates that the politics of commemoration remained far more contentious than has been previously acknowledged. Commemorations by ex-Confederates were intended at first to maintain a separate identity from the U.S. government, Blair argues, not as a vehicle for promoting sectional healing. The burial grounds of fallen heroes, known as Cities of the Dead, often became contested ground, especially for Confederate women who were opposed to Reconstruction. And until the turn of the century, African Americans used freedom celebrations to lobby for greater political power and tried to create a national holiday to recognize emancipation. Blair's analysis shows that some festive occasions that we celebrate even today have a divisive and sometimes violent past as various groups with conflicting political agendas attempted to define the meaning of the Civil War.

Urban Growth in the Age of Sectionalism
Urban Growth in the Age of Sectionalism

Author: David Goldfield

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 1999-03-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780807124918

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The urban growth of Virginia during the decade and a half before the Civil War has been an unjustly neglected subject in American history. With this authoritative book David Goldfield fills a long-standing gap in historical scholarship by providing much new information and a fresh perspective on urban development in the Old Dominion during the turbulent antebellum years. According to Goldfield’s interpretation, the urbanization of Virginia was prompted, in part, by the response of the state’s leaders to the sectionalism that increasingly influenced prewar southern ideas. Caught up in the intense competition for western trade and commerce, Virginia’s urbanizers dreamed of railroads and canals flung across the continent and bringing the wealth of the West into the Old Dominion. To realize these heroic visions, the state’s entrepreneurs planned railroad networks, invested in manufacturing, and sought to establish trade with Europe. Lynchburg and Petersburg became centers for tobacco manufacturing, the ports of Alexandria and Norfolk saw a resurgence of shipping activity, and Richmond developed flour-milling and iron-manufacturing industries. Local governments, labor systems, and the cities themselves expanded to accommodate urban growth, embracing the farmer as a partner in the urban economy. Finally, a distinct urban consciousness developed to provide an intellectual framework for the urbanization process. Despite the unprecedented growth of Virginia’s cities, however, their dreams of economic independence remained unfulfilled. By 1861 the state was more economically dependent on its northern rivals than it had ever been before. As the state reluctantly seceded from the Union, the subject of urban economic growth elicited sharp debate at the secession convention. Urban Virginia would have to wait until the “New South” years to renew the dreams of economic independence.

Creek Paths and Federal Roads
Creek Paths and Federal Roads

Author: Angela Pulley Hudson

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-06-10

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0807898279

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Creek Paths and Federal Roads, Angela Pulley Hudson offers a new understanding of the development of the American South by examining travel within and between southeastern Indian nations and the southern states, from the founding of the United States until the forced removal of southeastern Indians in the 1830s. During the early national period, Hudson explains, settlers and slaves made their way along Indian trading paths and federal post roads, deep into the heart of the Creek Indians' world. Hudson focuses particularly on the creation and mapping of boundaries between Creek Indian lands and the states that grew up around them; the development of roads, canals, and other internal improvements within these territories; and the ways that Indians, settlers, and slaves understood, contested, and collaborated on these boundaries and transit networks. While she chronicles the experiences of these travelers--Native, newcomer, free, and enslaved--who encountered one another on the roads of Creek country, Hudson also places indigenous perspectives squarely at the center of southern history, shedding new light on the contingent emergence of the American South.