Origins Of The New South In Respect Analysis

Sheldon Hackney was a historian of the post-Civil War South. Hackney was the protégé of historian C. Vann Woodward who specialized in the American South and wrote Origins of the New South. Hackney was the first in twenty years to challenge Woodward’s ideas that he expressed in his article. Because Hackney worked closely with Woodward, Hackney was able to know Woodward’s thoughts, ideas, and research first hand and apply this information to his article “Origins of the New South in Retrospect.” Hackney’s article contradicts Woodward’s romanticism of the New South by quoting historian’s research and comparing it to Woodward’s directly. The point of this paper is to show how Hackney provides a new perspective on the components that made up the New South despite Woodward’s sentiments. Hackney believed that Woodward was camouflaging the New South with irony by enhancing its features and the idea of it. Woodward used clever word choice to portray the South in a way that deems favorable to the upcoming generations. For instance, The …show more content…
The Redeemers, also known as Bourbons, were the oligarchy that controlled most of the South after the Civil War, a war between the Union and Confederate states that lasted four years. Woodward's view of the Redeemers played a significant part in his article. Woodward’s notion of the Redeemers was that they used white supremacy and home rule to disguise their personal behaviors and ways. He portrayed the Redeemers as men who went against the wishes of the people they served. On the other hand, Hackney gave the readers Holland Thompson's view, a historian who studies the New South. Thompson saw the Redeemers as honest men who's only fault was that they focused too much upon maintaining low taxes. Thompson depicted the Redeemers in a favorable light despite his view on Reconstruction itself. (Hackney, 192,