For the newspaper profession the problems confronted in reporting the Civil War were as catalytic as the war itself was for American society. Many of the problems encountered in reporting later wars were present in the Civil War, but they were new problems then: communications, transportation, Federal confiscation of printing presses, censorship, military personalities, and, after mid-1863, how to tell a proud people that it was losing the war. Professor Andrews, author of The North Reports the Civil War (1955), now turns his attention to the South. He shows that Southern war reporting at its best was comparable in quality to that of the leading Northern war correspondents, that the reporting of news by the Southern press was an essential ingredient not simply of journalism but also of the Confederate propaganda effort, and that the South's newsmen contributed to the revolution of a profession, an industry, and a form of human communication. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Includes section "Book reviews."

First published in 1949, Frank Lawrence Owsley’s Plain Folk of the Old South refuted the popular myth that the antebellum South contained only three classes—planters, poor whites, and slaves. Owsley draws on a wide range of source materials—firsthand accounts such as diaries and the published observations of travelers and journalists; church records; and county records, including wills, deeds, tax lists, and grand-jury reports—to accurately reconstruct the prewar South’s large and significant “yeoman farmer” middle class. He follows the history of this group, beginning with their migration from the Atlantic states into the frontier South, charts their property holdings and economic standing, and tells of the rich texture of their lives: the singing schools and corn shuckings, their courtship rituals and revival meetings, barn raisings and logrollings, and contests of marksmanship and horsemanship such as “snuffing the candle,” “driving the nail,” and the “gander pull.” A new introduction by John B. Boles explains why this book remains the starting point today for the study of society in the Old South.