C. Vann Woodward

The irony of southern history

before it, as it does at present, the regional historian is likely to be oppressed by a sense of his unimportance.1 America is the all-important subject, and national ideas, national institutions, and national policies are the themes that compel attention. Foreign peoples, eager to know what this New World colossus means to them and their immediate future, are impatient with details of regional variations, and Americans, intent on the need for national unity, tend to minimize their importance. New England, the West, and other regions are occasionally permitted to speak for the nation. But the South is thought to be hedged about with peculiarities that set it apart as unique. As a standpoint from which to write American history it is regarded as eccentric and as a background for a historian something of a handicap to be overcome. Of the eccentric position of the South in the nation there are admittedly many remaining indications. I do not think, however, that this eccentricity need be regarded as entirely a handicap. In fact, I think that it could possibly be turned to advantage by the southern historian both in understanding American history and in interpreting it to non-Americans. For from a broader point of view it is not the South but America that is unique among the peoples of the world. This eccentricity arises out of the American legend of success and victory, a legend that is not shared by any other people of the civilized world. The collective will of this country has simply never known what it means to be confronted by complete frustration. Whether by

Strange Career Critics: Long May they Persevere

Without the persistent attention of critics over the thirty-four years since its publication, The Strange Career ofJim Crow would have long since been forgotten. Lacking the demands for correction made by the flaws they discovered and the new findings they brought forth, I should have been hard put to justify the numerous revisions and new editions that have periodically helped revive interest in the subject. All along, of course, it has been the subject, rather than the book on the subject, that has explained the protracted attention and interest. I am nevertheless profoundly indebted to the critics for keeping the book alive along with the subject. I very much hope they will persevere. I promise to return to questions raised by some of the more recent critics.1 First, however, I should like to enter the fray myself. If the best defense is offense, perhaps the analogous strategy for criticism is self-criticism. At any rate, I have a good bit of self-criticism bottled up that might be offered here on that theory. Some of it may answer or duplicate, and some may forestall, the criticisms of others, but I hope none of it will discourage or slow the continued flow of criticism. Briefly stated, my main point is that work on this subject got started off on the wrong foot and that I bear heavy responsibility for the mischief. I am referring particularly to the question of racial segregation and its origins. What I did was to put the question when before the questions where and how, giving to time priority over circumstance and placing the chronology before the sociology and demography of the subject. I understand why I placed the issue of chronology foremost when I did. I believed then, and still do, that this ordering of priorities served a necessary and essential purpose. The fact remains that the approach did the historiography of the subject a disservice by giving it a wrong direction at the start. I should have been persuaded to make these admissions earlier by the nature of evidence presented in other contributions to the controversy, notably those of Leon F Litwack, Richard C. Wade, Ira Berlin, and Howard N. Rabinowitz. Each of them

The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian C. Vann Woodward and Chestnuts biographer Elisabeth Muhlenfeld present here the previously unpublished Civil War diaries of Mary Boykin Chestnut. Intimate and spontaneous, these surviving wartime diaries are preserved in their original form.