A Scalawag In Georgia

A controversial period in American history as revealed through one man's personal and political experiences

This unique book addresses the under-analyzed subject of internal migration in American historiography by showing the impact of eight generations of a family from New England on the development of Southern Georgia from the eighteenth to the end of the twentieth centuries. Focusing on cross-regional influences, The Tifts of Georgia sheds new light on such traditional topics as paternalism, cultural assimilation, and race relations. Originally from Mystic, Connecticut, the Tifts migrated to Key West, Florida, where they profited from the wrecking trade, set up business operations at various points along the eastern coast of the United States, and eventually made a significant impact on some of the less-developed areas of Georgia. The most important member of the family was Nelson Tift, a pioneer businessman who founded the city of Albany, Georgia, in the 1830s and played a major role on behalf of his adopted state during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His enterprises were often coordinated with his brother Asa in Key West. Their nephew, Henry Harding Tift, founded Tifton and Tift County, and Tift College in Forsyth was named for Henry's wife, Bessie, a major benefactor. Later Tifts were not only involved in the continued development of Albany and Tifton but made significant contributions to the economy and civic life of Macon, Atlanta, and other communities. The most important theme embodied in this monograph is how the Tifts brought Connecticut Yankee values to the South but were in turn transformed into Southerners. The Tifts of Georgia is richly illustrated with charts, maps, and original photographs. This history of an important Georgia family should be of special interest to professional and amateur historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and genealogists.

In the wake of the Civil War, Constance Fenimore Woolson became one of the first northern observers to linger in the defeated states from Virginia to Florida. Born in New Hampshire in 1840 and raised in Ohio, she was the grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper and was gaining success as a writer when she departed in 1873 for St. Augustine. During the next six years, she made her way across the South and reported what she saw, first in illustrated travel accounts and then in the poetry, stories, and serialized novels that brought unsettled social relations to the pages of Harper's Monthly, the Atlantic, Scribner's Monthly, Appletons' Journal, and the Galaxy. In the midst of Reconstruction and in print for years to come, Woolson revealed the sharp edges of loss, the sharper summons of opportunity, and the entanglements of northern misperceptions a decade before the waves of well-heeled tourists arrived during the 1880s. This volume's sixteen essays are intent on illuminating, through her example, the neglected world of Reconstruction's backwaters in literary developments that were politically charged and genuinely unpredictable. Drawing upon the postcolonial and transnational perspectives of New Southern Studies, as well as the cultural history, intellectual genealogy, and feminist priorities that lend urgency to the portraits of the global South, this collection investigates the mysterious, ravaged territory of a defeated nation as curious northern readers first saw it.

Beginning with the tumultuous events leading to Georgia's secession from the Union, I Will Give Them One More Shot follows the 1st Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel James N. Ramsey, as it travels from its formation at Macon, Georgia, to Pensacola, Richmond, Western (now West) Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Ramsey's regiment meets with initial success in a minor skirmish in the Allegheny Mountains at Laurel Hill, but then is involved in a disastrous retreat and rear guard fights at Kalers Ford and Corricks Ford, during which six companies are cut off from the army and become lost in the rugged Alleghenies, starving to the point of contemplating cannibalism. Serving under General Robert E. Lee at Cheat Mountain, the regiment finds itself involved in a friendly fire incident, then later fights well in the Confederate victory at Greenbriar River. Subsequently sent to the Shenandoah Valley to serve under General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the 1st endures horrible conditions in the winter ice and snow as the regiment march to Bath, Hancock, and Romney. Left in fetid and isolated winter quarters in Romney, the army to which the Georgians belong comes near to mutiny. The last two chapters review what happened to the soldiers and officers of the 1st after they mustered out in March 1862, concluding with the fate of prominent characters and sites. Appendices list the commands under which the 1st Georgia served during major events in its year of service, casualties in the unit, and a roster of the 1,332 men who served with the regiment.

This collection of biographical essays, written by thirty-four noted historians and political scientists, chronicles the times, careers, challenges, leadership, and legacies of the fifty-seven men and one woman who have served as the state's highest elected official. The book is organized chronologically into six sections that cover Alabama's years as a US territory and its early statehood, the 1840s through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the late nineteenth-century Bourbon era, twentieth-century progressive and wartime governors, the Civil Rights era and George Wallace's period of inf.

This Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875 banned racial discrimination in public accommodations. This first full study demonstrates that the Republicans enacted it believed that civil equality under the law would produce social order in the former rebel South.

The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

The Reconstruction of Georgia was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this study of the reconstruction period in Georgia following the Civil War, a British historian provides a dispassionate account of a highly controversial subject. A revisionist reappraisal, Dr. Conway's study is the first substantial history of the period to be published in fifty years. The sources include considerable material that has become available since the publication of the last major work on the subject in 1915. The author gives close attention to the last days of the Civil War and its aftermath in Georgia, the early attempts at political reconstruction in 1865, the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, the economic problems involved in reshaping the state's economy, the development of the state-cropping and crop-lien systems, the imposition of Congressional reconstruction on Georgia under military supervision, the political maneuverings and economic ventures of such prominent figures as Joseph E. Brown, Benjamin Hill, and Hannibal I. Kimball, the efforts of the Ku-Klux Klan to nullify Negro voting rights and re-establish "white supremacy" concepts, and, finally, the investigations by the Democratic party of Republication misgovernment during the administration of Governor Rufus B. Bullock. Dr. Conway, who did the research for the book in Georgia, has made considerable use of primary manuscripts, travelers' accounts, state and federal reports, and contemporary newspaper material to arrive at an account which judiciously assesses the claims and counter-claims of violently opposed groups which were vitally concerned with the place of the Negro in Southern society after emancipation and with the return of Georgia to the Union.