This book is a detailed description of the Piedmont region of the southeastern United States. It covers the geography, geology, and ecology of the region, as well as the history of the people who have lived there. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize After more than two decades, Origins of the New South is still recognized both as a classic in regional historiography and as the most perceptive account yet written on the period which spawned the New South. Historian Sheldon Hackney recently summed it up this way: “The pyramid still stands. Origins of the New South has survived relatively untarnished through twenty years of productive scholarship, including the eras of consensus and of the new radicalism. . . . Woodward recognizes both the likelihood of failure and the necessity of struggle. It is this profound ambiguity which makes his work so interesting. Like the myth of Sisyphus, Origins of the New South still speaks to our condition.” This enlarged edition contains a new preface by the author and a critical essay on recent works by Charles B. Dew.