William Harris, the editor of Routledge's The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture, aims in The New South to introduce students to the historiography of this later volatile period of southern history, which starts from the racial segregation prevalent after the end of the Civil War and continues through the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s. For many years, this historiography centered on the writing of C. Vann Woodward. Woodward remains an important touchstone in the field, but in The New South, Harris gathers the most significant scholarship illustrating the range of challenges to Woodward's interpretation of the South, including the importance of place, the role of women, the significance of memory, and the story of the long Civil Rights Movement. The collection also features an introduction to the historiography of the New South, and a Guide to Further Reading.

In this, the re-titled second edition of Society and Culture in the Slave South, J. William Harris selects the most recent and original scholarship in the field of the antebellum South published since 1992, when the first edition appeared. The present volume illustrates both the continuities and new developments in antebellum Southern history, starting from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and moving into work that challenges their traditional reading of the slave South as a paternalist society. The collection also features an introduction to the historiography of the slave South, and a Guide to Further Reading.

Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this dynamic area. It includes substantial excerpts from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lay out the influential interpretation of the South as a "paternalistic" society and culture, and contributions from more recent scholars who provide dissenting or alternative interpretations of the relations between masters and slaves, men and women. The essays draw on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology and anthropology to investigate the nature of plantation and family life.
Contributions by established scholars include Bertram Wyatt-Brown's provocative essay on slave psychology, excerpts from Sterling Stuckey's analysis of the African roots of slave religion and folklore, and Robert William Fogel's newest synthesis of the work on the economics of slavery. Essays by youngerhistorians, including Deborah White, Joan Cashin, Norrence T. Jones, Jr. and Seven M. Stowe probe family relationships among whites and blacks on slave plantations.

Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this field. It includes excerpts from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lay out the influential interpretation of the South as a "paternalistic" society and culture, and contributions from more recent scholars who provide dissenting or alternative interpretations of the relations between masters and slaves and men and women. The essays draw on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology and anthropology to investigate the nature of plantation and family life in the South. Explanatory notes guide the reader through each essay and the editor's introduction places the work in its historiographical context. Contributors include Eugene Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Sterling Stuckey, Robert William Fogel, Deborah Gray White and Joan E. Cashin.

This compelling collection of original documents and current scholarship sheds considerable light on the underside of the poor white experience in the antebellum South. In 1859, the Georgian Edward Isham, convicted in North Carolina of murdering a Piedmont farmer, dictated his life story to his court-appointed defense attorney. The autobiography left behind provides a rare look at the world of poor whites from the viewpoint of a member of this most elusive of the Old South's social groups. A selection of essays accompanying the autobiography examines the meaning of the document from a variety of perspectives: crime, frontier life, gender relations, labor, and the genre of nineteenth-century confessional literature.

William Harris, the editor of Routledgea (TM)s The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture, aims in The New South to introduce students to the historiography of this later volatile period of southern history, which starts from the racial segregation prevalent after the end of the Civil War and continues through the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s. For many years, this historiography centered on the writing of C. Vann Woodward. Woodward remains an important touchstone in the field, but in The New South, Harris gathers the most significant scholarship illustrating the range of challenges to Woodwarda (TM)s interpretation of the South, including the importance of place, the role of women, the significance of memory, and the story of the "long Civil Rights Movement." The collection also features an introduction to the historiography of the New South, and a Guide to Further Reading.

In this exciting study of the communities on both sides of the Savannah River in Georgia and South Carolina, J. William Harris explores two great ironies of American history, the South's commitment to a liberty supported by slavery and its attempt to maintain the status quo with a war that undermined southern society. Relying on strong research in quantifiable data as well as manuscript records, Harris examines why white southerners, most of whom did not own slaves, united in a long, bloody war to preserve the institution. He argues that slaveowners relied on an ideology of liberty, a potential for social mobility, and a web of personal relationships between classes to contain white class divisions and ensure control over the black population. The strains of war, Harris shows, dissolved these bonds of community and made Confederate victory impossible, forever changing southern society.

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln promised that the nation's sacrifices during the Civil War would lead to a "new birth of freedom." Lincoln's Unfinished Work analyzes how the United States has attempted to realize-or subvert-that promise over the past century and a half. The volume is not solely about Lincoln, or the immediate unfinished work of Reconstruction, or the broader unfinished work of America coming to terms with its tangled history of race; it investigates all three topics. The book opens with an essay by Richard Carwardine, who explores Lincoln's distinctive sense of humor. Later in the volume, Stephen Kantrowitz examines the limitations of Lincoln's Native American policy, while James W. Loewen discusses how textbooks regularly downplay the sixteenth president's antislavery convictions. Lawrence T. McDonnell looks at the role of poor Blacks and whites in the disintegration of the Confederacy. Eric Foner provides an overview of the Constitution-shattering impact of the Civil War amendments. Essays by J. William Harris and Jerald Podair examine the fate of Lincoln's ideas about land distribution to freedpeople. Gregory P. Downs focuses on the structural limitations that Republicans faced in their efforts to control racist violence during Reconstruction. Adrienne Petty and Mark Schultz argue that Black land ownership in the post-Reconstruction South persisted at surprisingly high rates. Rhondda Robinson Thomas examines the role of convict labor in the construction of Clemson University, the site of the conference from which this book evolved. Other essays look at events in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Randall J. Stephens analyzes the political conservatism of white evangelical Christianity. Peter Eisenstadt uses the career of Jackie Robinson to explore the meanings of integration. Joshua Casmir Catalano and Briana Pocratsky examine the debased state of public history on the airwaves, particularly as purveyed by the History Channel. Gavin Wright rounds out the volume with a striking political and economic analysis of the collapse of the Democratic Party in the South. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a far-reaching, thought-provoking exploration of the unfinished work of democracy, particularly as it pertains to the legacy of slavery and white supremacy in America.