Böcker i Southern Classics-serien

In 1904 William Garrott Brown traveled the American South, investigating the region's political, economic, and social conditions. Using the pen name "e;Stanton,"e; Brown published twenty epistles in the Boston Evening Transcript detailing his observations. The South at Work is a compilation of these newspaper articles, providing a valuable snapshot of the South as it was simultaneously emerging from post-Civil War economic depression and imposing on African Americans the panoply of Jim Crow laws and customs that sought to exclude them from all but the lowest rungs of southern society. A Harvard-educated historian and journalist originally from Alabama, Brown had been commissioned by the Evening Transcript to visit a wide range of locations and to chronicle the region with a greater depth than that of typical travelers' accounts. Some articles featured familiar topics such as a tobacco warehouse in Durham, North Carolina; a textile mill in Columbia, South Carolina; and the vast steel mills at Birmingham. However, Brown also covered atypical enterprises such as citrus farming in Florida, the King Ranch in Texas, and the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. To add perspective, he talked to businessmen and politicians, as well as everyday workers. In addition to describing the importance of diversifying the South's agricultural economy beyond cotton, Brown addressed race relations and the role of politicians such as James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, the growth of African American communities such as Hayti in Durham, and the role universities played in changing the intellectual climate of the South. The editor, Bruce E. Baker, has written an introduction and provided thorough annotations for each of Brown's letters. Baker demonstrates the value of the collection as it touches on racism, moderate progressivism, and accommodation with the political status quo in the South. Baker and Brown's combined work makes The South at Work one of the most detailed and interesting portraits of the region at the beginning of the twentieth century. Publication in book form makes The South at Work conveniently available to students and scholars of modern southern and American history.

A rare classic in American social science, Edgar Thompson's 1932 University of Chicago dissertation, "e;The Plantation,"e; broke new analytic ground in the study of the southern plantation system. Thompson refuted long-espoused climatic theories of the origins of plantation societies and offered instead a richly nuanced understanding of the links between plantation culture, the global history of capitalism, and the political and economic contexts of hierarchical social classification. This first complete publication of Thompson's study makes available to modern readers one of the earliest attempts to reinterpret the history of the American South as an integral part of global processes. In this Southern Classics edition, editors Sidney W. Minz and George Baca provide a thorough introduction explicating Thompson's guiding principles and grounding his germinal work in its historical context. Thompson viewed the plantation as a political institution in which the quasi-industrial production of agricultural staples abroad through race-making labor systems solidified and advanced European state power. His interpretation marks a turning point in the scientific study of an ancient agricultural institution, in which the plantation is seen as a pioneering instrument for the expansion of the global economy. Further, his awareness of the far-reaching history of economic globalization and of the conception of race as socially constructed predicts viewpoints that have since become standard. As such, this overlooked gem in American intellectual history is still deeply relevant for ongoing research and debate in social, economic, and political history.

John E. Cairnes's seminal work on slavery was widely acclaimed upon its publication in 1862 as a brilliant attempt both to explain the essential cause of the American Civil War and to shape European policy concerning the struggle.

Consisting of ""Blackways of Kent"" (1955), ""Millways of Kent"" (1958), and ""Townways of Kent"", the ""Kent Trilogy"" forms a southern ethnography. This text presents an account of African American life in a small Southern town just prior to the Civil Rights era. It includes a preface on the origins and impact of the ""Kent Trilogy"".

Recognized since its publication in 1926 as a watershed in American historiography, Craven's study of soil depletion in Virginia and Maryland links elements of the author's frontier thesis, causal aspects of the expansion of slavery, and the economics of staple-crop production.

Published in Richmond, Virginia, ""The Southern Literary Messenger"" was originally edited by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1905, Benjamin Blake Minor wrote a study of this magazine. This book presents Minor's account of the journal's history, along with an introduction by Wells which places Minor's account in a historical context.

A memoir of the ambitious life and controversial political career of Louisiana governor Henry Clay Warmoth (1842-1931). It provides an account of the political and social machinations of Civil War America and the war's aftermath in one of the most volatile states of the defeated Confederacy.

A firsthand look at one of South Carolina's most influential antebellum dynasties and the institutions of slavery and plantation agriculture upon which it was built. , Robert F. W. Allston's letters, speeches, receipts, and ledger entries chronicle both the heyday of the rice industry and its precipitate crash during the Civil War.

Originally published in 1878, this novel marked the emergence of a feminist critique of southern society. It follows the romance between a free-spirited, intellectual woman and a Union soldier, and broke new ground in its representation of a wife's ""duties"" and the inclusion of black characters.

The bibliography he has provided includes 183 newspapers, published in towns that stretched from North Carolina to Texas.