2. Section to nation

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Economic System ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
American South ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
The American South ◽  
Sectional Identity

‘Section to nation’ examines how, by 1830, the American South had long had a predominantly agricultural economy. Its people soon idealized the agrarian republic that had taken shape after the American Revolution as the basis for an emerging sectional identity. Slavery was the basis of a productive economic system, in which the South was enmeshed with northern merchants and traders and the whole financial world of England. The American Civil War undermined southern ideology dramatically through the emancipation of slaves. The Reconstruction era would be nearly equal to the Civil War in forging a self-conscious white southern identity.

The Anti-Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles as a Reconstruction-Era Event

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Jew
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
American South ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
California History ◽  
The South ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
The American South ◽  
Changing Times ◽  
Social Orders

Long regarded as a violent outburst significant mainly for California history, the 1871 Los Angeles anti-Chinese massacre raises themes central to America’s Civil War Reconstruction era between 1865 and 1877, namely, the resort to threats and violence to preserve traditionally conceived social and political authority and power. Although the Los Angeles events occurred far from the American South, the Los Angeles anti-Chinese massacre paralleled the anti-black violence that rose in the South during Reconstruction. Although the immediate causes of the violence in the post–Civil War South and California were far different, they shared one key characteristic: they employed racial disciplining to preserve traditional social orders that old elites saw as threatened by changing times and circumstances.

Resilience of Southern Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Cooper ◽  
H. Gibbs Knotts
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
American South ◽  
First Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Remarkable Change ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Interstate Highway System ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The American South

The American South has experienced remarkable change over the past half century. Black voter registration has increased, the region’s politics have shifted from one-party Democratic to the near-domination of the Republican Party, and in-migration has increased its population. At the same time, many outward signs of regional distinctiveness have faded--chain restaurants have replaced mom-and-pop diners, and the interstate highway system connects the region to the rest of the country. Given all of these changes, many have argued that southern identity is fading. But here, Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts show how these changes have allowed for new types of southern identity to emerge. For some, identification with the South has become more about a connection to the region’s folkways or to place than about policy or ideology. For others, the contemporary South is all of those things at once--a place where many modern-day southerners navigate the region’s confusing and omnipresent history. Regardless of how individuals see the South, this study argues that the region’s drastic political, racial, and cultural changes have not lessened the importance of southern identity but have played a key role in keeping regional identification relevant in the twenty-first century.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
William A. Link
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Global Events ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The American South ◽  
American Nation ◽  
National Borders

William Link introduces key contexts for the book, namely that the origins, onsets, and resolutions of the American Civil War are best understood as a global struggle. Not only was the creation of a new American nation a result of the war, but this creation also occurred in concert with a worldwide emergence of modern nationalism. By 1860, the American South contained the world’s largest and most valuable enslaved population, and the huge wealth in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco secured through slave labor is what drove exports, trade, and profit in American and global financial centers. This book suggests new ways to situate US Reconstruction as affecting and being affected by global events, and it argues that Reconstruction cannot be understood unless we extend our analysis beyond national borders.

scholarly journals The Post-Bellum Recovery of the South and the Cost of the Civil War

1976 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 898-907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Temin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Supply ◽  
American South ◽  
The South ◽  
Rate Of Growth ◽  
Lasting Effect ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Cost

In the last half of the nineteenth century the economy of the American South experienced three separate shocks which have been analyzed separately by different authors. This note synthesizes the literature and presents an integrated story in which the decline in the rate of growth of the demand for cotton (noted by Wright) and the results of emancipation on the southern labor supply (noted by Ransom and Sutch) had equal impacts on measured income in the post-bellum South. The Civil War itself had a much smaller and less lasting effect on southern income than Coldin and Lewis assumed; in the long run, it was the least important of the three shocks.

1. Becoming southern

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
New World ◽  
American South ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Staple Crops ◽  
The American South ◽  
Fertile Land

‘Becoming Southern’ discusses how Native Americans became the first southerners. They developed the first regional culture from environmental conditions that would always be a foundation of regional life. The Europeans who came to what became the American South brought with them preconceptions about that area, which were part of a New World that evoked images of fertile land that produced staple crops to enrich European nations, but also represented exploitation of African and indigenous labor and the threat of racial intermingling. The early 1700s were crucial years in the emergent South. The American Revolution itself was a landmark in the appearance of a self-conscious southern identity.

‘Our Brethren’: A British Version of Southern Separatist Ideology during the American Civil War

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Michael J. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Economic Interest ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The North ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The American South ◽  
British People

British responses to the American Civil War were not straightforward, though the relevant historiography has tended to concentrate on a number of now quite familiar explanations. The reasons why British people took sides – if they did (for some did not) – are usually thought to have been shaped by the slavery question and concomitant thinking about race, labour systems, and the nature of work; by direct economic interest – cotton, grain, investments, and the potential for future commerce; by political ideas, relating especially to democracy, national self-determination, federalism, and republics; and by geostrategic concerns about how best to preserve Britain's global role and imperial power. These were all important, but so was a relatively neglected set of influences on British opinion that arose from cultural and social determinants. This article suggests that many British people supported the Confederacy because they saw the American South as fundamentally unlike the North and, what is more, as recognizably ‘English’. The words and deeds of a prominent pro-Southerner, A.J. Beresford Hope, are used to elucidate this motivation for taking sides. Scholars have not previously investigated Hope's activism or the cultural and social case for the Confederacy in much detail.

Police Torture and “Legal Lynchings” in the American South

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-38
Author(s):  
Silvan Niedermeier
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American South ◽  
Black History ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Women ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
The American South

This chapter examines the connection between the torture inflicted by law enforcement officials in the South during the 1930s and 1940s and the decline in the number of lynching of African Americans during this period. The Scottsboro case displays the racist structure of the justice system and outlines the tradition of violence and pattern of African Americans accused of rape and sexual assault. The illustration of violence further examines black history involving the Reconstruction era in which African American challenged for equality against white supremacy. Emphasized in this chapter is the process of torture by lynching against African American. Lynching aimed to discipline landless blacks and serve as a fear and embed a stereotype of racial difference. The decrease of lynching occurred in the early 1900s as the South questioned their reputation, and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) promoted anti-lynching campaigns. The case of Ed Brown, Arthur Ellington, and Henry Shields documents the violent dynamics that tended to emerge as state authorities increasingly asserted their monopoly on the use of force in the South.

Cotton Competition and the Post-Bellum Recovery of the American South

1974 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 610-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Expansion ◽  
World Markets ◽  
The World ◽  
The American South

As evidence has accumulated on the prosperity of the American South under slavery prior to the Civil War, attention has turned to a search for explanations for the apparent stagnation of the southern economy after the Civil War. One class of explanations involves the argument that the South experienced special difficulties in recovering her place in the international cotton market during the late 1860's and 1870's. In one version of this hypothesis, the presence of “new” sources of supply, stimulated by the cotton famine of 1861–65, acted to displace American cotton in world markets during this period. A second version, recently proposed by Mark Aldrich, argues that appreciation of the dollar resulting from capital imports and northern economic expansion forced American cotton to compete with the rest of the world on unfavorable terms prior to the resumption of specie payments in 1879.

The Growth Strategies of Southern Railroads, 1865-1893

1967 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maury Klein ◽  
Kozo Yamamura
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
Growth Strategies ◽  
The South ◽  
Regional Transport ◽  
The American South

Railroads were unquestionably a leading sector of economic development in the American South following the Civil War. By appraising the growth strategies followed by southern roads as functions of their profitability, the authors illustrate how the supply of regional transport in the South was patterned by the decisions of competing groups of businessmen.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document