Looking South: Chapters in the Story of an American Region

(Hardback)

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The dramatic changes experienced by the South over the past 150 years have challenged deeply rooted values, beliefs, and institutions and shaped the region's complex and tumultuous history. These challenges, and the southern response to them, are the focus of this book. Presenting sixteen essays selected from more than eighty presented at a recent conference on the South, it provides an interpretive re-examination of five major topics in southern history. These are the impact of Reconstruction, the development of racial attitudes, the debate over secession, southern economic development, and the use of literature as an instrument of self-criticism and analysis. The first chapter surveys interpretations of the Reconstruction era and analyzes it in terms of the extended historical process of adjusting to the end of slavery. Several essays trace some of the ways in which racial attitudes have affected the evolution of southern society from the colonial era to the present. Among the topics considered are the defense and support of slavery by the southern religious establishment, the impact of African-American culture on the early Ku Klux Klan, the experience of desegregation, and the stereotyping of blacks. Addressing the question of secession, the next group of essays examines the varying responses to the issue in different southern counties and states. Chapters on southern economic development discuss women's roles in the colonial agricultural economy, postbellum developments in agricultural labor, and the lives of two individualistic southern entrepreneurs. The final chapters examine the efforts of southern writers to understand the southern experience and to tell the story of the South in fiction and popular history. Including the contributions of many leading historians, this work offers fascinating new data as well as significant reinterpretations in several major areas of southern historical scholarship. It will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers concerned with southern, African-American, and U.S. history.

Reviews

.,."On the whole, Moore and Tripp do a fine job of organizing a number of diverse essays so as to enhance their significance...."-Atlanta History
. . . All in all, Looking South: Chapters in the Story of an American Region is a fine collection. It reveals the complexity of southern history and leaves one wanting to know more about the various subjects.-The North Carolina Historical Review
. . . The contents of this volume, derived largely from research on larger topics, enrich and expand the meaning of the southern experience.-Florida Historical Quarterly
...On the whole, Moore and Tripp do a fine job of organizing a number of diverse essays so as to enhance their significance....-Atlanta History
A collection of 16 essays originally presented as papers at a Citadel conference on southern history, held in April 1987. The editors have written a useful introduction summarizing the essays, which are organized around four themes: racial attitudes and the changes they have undergone from the 18th to the mid-20th centuries; the tangled history of southern unionism in the secessionist crises before 1861; the development of the region's economy; and southerners' apparently endemic eagerness to think and talk about their region. An essay by Eric Foner summarizes his recent work, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (CH, Oct'88). Moore and Tripp believe that the common thread binding these pieces is their concern with how the South "dealt with changes that challenged Southerners' dominant beliefs and institutions." Perhaps even more clearly, the authors, when not exploring hitherto unstudied subjects, appear to be reexamining and challenging a number of older assumptions about southern history. Whatever the case, the collection reflects fresh scholarship in a heavily worked field and is likely to be well received. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-Choice
..."On the whole, Moore and Tripp do a fine job of organizing a number of diverse essays so as to enhance their significance...."-Atlanta History
." . . All in all, Looking South: Chapters in the Story of an American Region is a fine collection. It reveals the complexity of southern history and leaves one wanting to know more about the various subjects."-The North Carolina Historical Review
." . . The contents of this volume, derived largely from research on larger topics, enrich and expand the meaning of the southern experience."-Florida Historical Quarterly
"A collection of 16 essays originally presented as papers at a Citadel conference on southern history, held in April 1987. The editors have written a useful introduction summarizing the essays, which are organized around four themes: racial attitudes and the changes they have undergone from the 18th to the mid-20th centuries; the tangled history of southern unionism in the secessionist crises before 1861; the development of the region's economy; and southerners' apparently endemic eagerness to think and talk about their region. An essay by Eric Foner summarizes his recent work, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (CH, Oct'88). Moore and Tripp believe that the common thread binding these pieces is their concern with how the South "dealt with changes that challenged Southerners' dominant beliefs and institutions." Perhaps even more clearly, the authors, when not exploring hitherto unstudied subjects, appear to be reexamining and challenging a number of older assumptions about southern history. Whatever the case, the collection reflects fresh scholarship in a heavily worked field and is likely to be well received. Upper-division undergraduates and above."-Choice

Author Bio

WINFRED B. MOORE, JR., is Associate Professor of History at The Citadel. His publications include The Southern Enigma: Essays on Race, Class, and Folk Culture (Greenwood Press, 1983), Developing Dixie: Modernization in a Traditional Society (Greenwood Press, 1988), and articles, essays, and contributed chapters on topics in southern history. JOSEPH F. TRIPP is Professor of History at The Citadel and coeditor of Developing Dixie: Modernization in a Traditional Society. He has also written several articles on aspects of labor history and is currently working on a study of the American Association of Labor Legislation.