Volume 40, Number 6 · March 25, 1993
The Old New Order
By George M. Fredrickson
The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction
by Edward L. Ayers
Oxford University Press, 572 pp., $30.00
For some observers, the election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore signified the coming to power of a new generation of white southerners who are more cosmopolitan, racially tolerant, and forward-looking than their predecessors. Inevitably the phrase 'the New South' has been used to describe the change that has allegedly occurred. The claim that a new South has arisen to put an end to the region's history of backwardness and reaction (however defined) has been asserted before. In fact the phrase originated in the 1880s as the slogan of a vocal group of industrial and commercial promoters who proclaimed that the South had benefitted from the abolition of slavery and was now ready to join the North in pursuit of the American dream of prosperity through capitalist enterprise and wage labor.
Review, 3150 words
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