In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the character of the
South, and even its persistence as a distinct region, was an open
question. During Reconstruction, 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. In
Stories of the South, K. Stephen 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.
Examining novels, minstrel songs, travel brochures, illustrations,
oratory, and other cultural artifacts produced in the half century
following the Civil War, Prince demonstrates the centrality of
popular culture to the reconstruction of southern identity,
shedding new light on the complicity of the North in the retreat
from the possibility of racial democracy.