The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 346
641 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
a great wealth of historical material, and on the whole he has
weighed and interpreted superbly the various factors in the evolu-
tion of the New South.
According to Woodward, the commercial-minded Redeemers,
by disfranchising or otherwise manipulating an adequate number
of Negroes, poor whites, and insurgents, dominated southern
politics during most of the period under review. Concurrently
there developed a colonial industrial economy subserviently
geared to northern convenience and featuring basic processing
with its employment of cheap labor. A system of caste was estab-
lished or re-established, and new compromises of old sectional
disputes were reached or approached.
This study deals with a complex region and a turbulent period
that do not lend themselves to easy and universally accepted
treatment, and any series of evaluations of the post-Reconstruction
South would ordinarily be questioned at least in part. Dissent
from some of the author's points, however, will not come from
a simple disagreement with his re-revisionist approach.
One of Woodward's endeavors is to establish the Redeemers
as a circus of former Whigs, who were willing hirelings of north-
ern magnates while parading reluctantly under the Democratic
banner. This Neo-Democrat, directing the politics of "a totally
Whiggish world" in the South, with only occasional difficulty
herded the mass of southerners "up the right fork" in support of
collaboration with his Republican soul mates. In so doing the
southern Democrat deserted the northern branch of his party,
joined hands with the Republicans, and permitted the presidency
to go to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. To buttress his thesis
Woodward asserts that in 1877 "almost twice as many Republi-
cans as Northern Democrats voted with the South in favor of an
appropriation for repairing Mississippi levees and reclaiming
flooded lands." But when one makes an analysis of that vote as
recorded in the Congressional Record, he is unable to accept the
author's thesis without serious qualifications. For as the Record
shows, fourteen northern Democrats, thirty-two southern Demo-
crats, and twenty-four Republicans voted for the measure. Ten
of these Republicans were from the South; the other fourteen
were from states wholly or partially in the Mississippi watershed.
Among the Republicans from Hayes' own state of Ohio, none346
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953, periodical, 1953; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101145/m1/392/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.