Excerpt from A History of Southern Literature In only one period may be found plentiful results of study - the period named in this book The Beginnings. This division Of the subject Professor Moses Coit Tyler has treated with such scholarly accuracy and fullness that the author could do little more than repeat his assertions. But this period past, there is indeed poverty Of data. It is the author's hope that a more zealous spirit Of research may be aroused by this pioneer volume, and that through this means not a few works Of real value may again be brought to light. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Since the Civil War whites and blacks have struggled over the meanings and uses of the Southern past. Indeed, today's controversies over flying the Confederate flag, renaming schools and streets, and commemorating the Civil War and the civil rights movement are only the latest examples of this ongoing divisive contest over issues of regional identity and heritage. The Southern Past argues that these battles are ultimately about who has the power to determine what we remember of the past, and whether that remembrance will honor all Southerners or only select groups. For more than a century after the Civil War, elite white Southerners systematically refined a version of the past that sanctioned their racial privilege and power. In the process, they filled public spaces with museums and monuments that made their version of the past sacrosanct. Yet, even as segregation and racial discrimination worsened, blacks contested the white version of Southern history and demanded inclusion. Streets became sites for elaborate commemorations of emancipation and schools became centers for the study of black history. This counter-memory surged forth, and became a potent inspiration for the civil rights movement and the black struggle to share a common Southern past rather than a divided one. W. Fitzhugh Brundage's searing exploration of how those who have the political power to represent the past simultaneously shape the present and determine the future is a valuable lesson as we confront our national past to meet the challenge of current realities.

C. Vann Woodward's The Burden of Southern History remains one of the essential history texts of our time. In it Woodward brilliantly addresses the interrelated themes of southern identity, southern distinctiveness, and the strains of irony that characterize much of the South's historical experience. First published in 1960, the book quickly became a touchstone for generations of students. This updated third edition contains a chapter, "Look Away, Look Away," in which Woodward finds a plethora of additional ironies in the South's experience. It also includes previously uncollected appreciations of Robert Penn Warren, to whom the book was originally dedicated, and William Faulkner. This edition also features a new foreword by historian William E. Leuchtenburg in which he recounts the events that led up to Woodward's writing The Burden of Southern History, and reflects on the book's -- and Woodward's -- place in the study of southern history. The Burden of Southern History is quintessential Woodward -- wise, witty, ruminative, daring, and as alive in the twenty-first century as when it was written.

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the North assumed significant power to redefine the South, imagining a region rebuilt and modeled on northern society. The white South actively resisted these efforts, battling the legal strictures of Reconstruction on the ground. Meanwhile, white southern storytellers worked to recast the South's image, romanticizing the Lost Cause and heralding the birth of a New South. Prince argues that this cultural production was as important as political competition and economic striving in turning the South and the nation away from the egalitarian promises of Reconstruction and toward Jim Crow.

The origins of Clarke County, Virginia go back more than 250 years to the men and women who first settled in Shenandoah Valley and left their imprint upon the land. When, in the early 1830s, the people in one portion of old Frederick County moved to establish their own county, they were seeking to maintain the way of life they had inherited from this earlier generation. At the same time, they were acting in concert with contemporary forces that had a statewide, and in some ways national, significance. The origins of Clarke County--how it came to be, and why--are examined here for the first time. Warren R. Hofstra not only tells the story of the people who made Clarke County a separate place but also puts the movement for its formation in the context of Virginia and U.S. politics. It is a story fascinating in detail and rich in implication, for the issues that strained old Frederick to the breaking point--local control vs. an expanded federal government, conformity vs. pluralism, agrarian values vs. commercial pursuits--are still featured in the political debates today both regionally and nationally.