Southern Stories

Download or read book Stories of the South written by K. Stephen Prince and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.