Virginia’s Gilded Age New South is introduced in five books. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, encompasses American political, economic, and cultural history 1865 to 1905, then Origins of the New South looks at the time period as a political history including Virginia, and The Promise of the New South treats economic and cultural life after Reconstruction.
The Search for Order explores how technology, urbanization and immigration, industrialism and economic depressions caused community dislocations throughout the United States, and Struggle for Mastery, discusses disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South during this period with a chapter on Virginia, from 1888 to 1908.
For additional Virginia political and social histories, see the Book Club for your bookshelf.
New Spirits: Americans
New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905 (2010) by Rebecca Edwards looks at the continuities throughout this modernizing period in politics, society, gender and culture. A new national state was created, along with a nationalized economy than changed daily life everywhere and led to labor unrest, political reform and a new commercial order internationally.
Following the Civil War was a time of government activism at both national and state levels, and this brought conflict over education, municipal and state regulation, railroads and tariffs. The rising middle class became ascendant among new classes of immigrants, Afro-Americans and women as electrical power and the telephone became widespread.
Important societal changes were far reaching in education, sexuality and religion, including increasing diversity with large numbers of Catholics, Jews and social gospel Protestants. The supremacy of nationally consolidated businesses amidst economic panics and depression led to the rise of Progressivism to regulate it nationally. Learn more to buy “New Spirits” for your bookshelf at Amazaon.com.
Origins of the New South
Origins of the New South: 1877-1913 (1951, 1971, 1999) by C. Vann Woodward is the story of the rallying cry to win prosperity for the South by copying the business ethos of the North to capitalize and industrialize following the devastation of the Civil War. The Redeemer Democrats took control following Reconstruction, displacing the Bourbon gentry and laying the foundations of the early 20th century South for “race, politics, economics and law”. But throughout this period there were many different voices from diverse regional, economic and racial viewpoints.
The amassed railroad and cotton or tobacco wealth did not trickle down, as land monopoly, absentee ownership and the evils of the one-crop system share-cropping left the remaining family farmers in a perpetual “slough” of depression. Alliances between big business employers and state governments defeated urban and rural efforts by labor to organize either economically or at the ballot box. The Atlanta Compromise philosophy of Booker T. Washington was widely adopted in African American communities until after his death in 1915.
The Southern Progressive movement was for whites only, although northern philanthropists and few southern reformers sought to expand public education, restrict child labor, improve farming methods and eradicate widespread lethargy-producing hookworm. Virginia and the South voted for Woodrow Wilson in 1912, and many more Southern leaders are appointed in national offices. Learn more to buy “Origins of the New South” for your bookshelf at Amazaon.com.
The Promise of the New South
The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (2007) Edward L. Ayers offers “the other half” of the New South besides the powerful businessmen who prevailed in state politics. This book focuses on the economically and socially non-elite. Railroads brought competing and conflicting visions and versions of a New South. Class as much as race kept southerners apart, even as railroads through the diverse elements together in the newly emerging commercial terminals.
Lower-class whites, evangelicals, women and blacks all have their say here. And while black-white relations remained flexible over this period, including widespread black enfranchisement into the 1890s, the impulse towards a multi-racial Populism is sacrificed at the color line, and the promise of prosperous community on big business principles resulted in widespread anxiety, resentment and crisis. Learn more to buy “The Promise of the New South” for your bookshelf at Amazaon.com.
The Search for Order
The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1966) by Robert H. Wiebe remains in print as a paperback explaining the Gilded Era from Reconstruction through World War I. The isolation of pre-Civil War communities with face-to-face ethical values and local identity were rapidly replaced by voluntary associations and intergroup relations based on occupation and ethnic identity with bureaucratic values in a more national identity.
Increased communications by railroad and telephone broke down the previously “island” communities, and this social dislocation was compounded by large scale internal migrations to urban areas with additional new immigrants from abroad.
Government developed greater, more centralized power extended over expanded geographical areas. The decline of local community gave rise to the regulated society. Reform movements sought to find orderly economic and social organization compatible with a new middle class arising with larger perspectives from their professional and social organizations. Learn more to buy “The Search for Order” for your bookshelf at Amazaon.com.
Struggle for Mastery
Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 (2003) by Michael Perman explains how Southern states took the vote from the Afro-American in the name of white supremacy. Beginning in 1890, they effectively gutted the Fifteenth Amendment. The reasons differed from state to state. Perman logically treats each state independently, while also comparing various forces for disenfranchisement, the powerful enactors of each state, and the out-maneuvered dissidents.
The first phase of extra-constitutional means focused on the black man alone such as the poll tax and the whites-only primary. In a second phase, these were extended constitutionally to exclude half of the whites who were the poorer sorts. The “ignorant and vicious” of both races in the South had flirted with Populism and so threatened the newly established New South order. Only after the massive electoral exclusions could there be a “solid South” of one party rule. Learn more to buy “Struggle for Mastery” for your bookshelf at Amazaon.com.
Virginia’s Gilded Age New South: Virginiana
The defining political issue in Virginia politics during the Gilded Age New South was retiring the pre-Civil War debt, both for bi-racial Readjuster Republicans and Conservative Democratic Redeemers, and that issue is explored in A Saga of the New South. Three local city histories focus on Virginia’s growing diverse railroad cities in Gilded Age Richmond, Gilded Age Norfolk, and Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912.
Four biographies exemplify the spirit of the Gilded Age New South Virginia, Lewis Ginter: Richmond’s Gilded Age Icon, The Dooleys of Richmond documenting a Virginia family, and one on Thomas M. Logan, a South Carolina carpetbagger in A Builder of the New South. At the other end of the economic spectrum, A Kind of Fate is an account of two generations of the same farmer family in Virginia.
A Saga of the New South
A Saga of the New South: Race, Law and Public Debt in Virginia (2016) by Brent Tartar
Gilded Age Richmond
Gilded Age Richmond: Gaiety, Greed & Lost Cause Mania (2017) by Brian Burns
Gilded Age Norfolk
Gilded Age Norfolk, Virginia: Tidewater Wealth, Industry and Propriety (2015) by Jaclyn Spainhour
Gilded Age Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South (2008) by Rand Dotson
Lewis Ginter of Richmond
Lewis Ginter: Richmond’s Gilded Age Icon (2011) by Brian Burns
The Dooleys of Richmond
The Dooleys of Richmond: An Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South (2017) Mary Lynn Bayliss
Thomas M. Logan: a builder of the New South
A Builder of the New South: Notes on the career of Thomas M. Logan (2011) by Lily Logan Morrill is a biography
A Kind of Fate
A Kind of Fate: Agricultural Change in Virginia, 1861-1920 (2002) by G. Terry Sharrer is an account of two generations of the same farmer family in Virginia.
For additional Virginia political and social histories, see the Book Club for your bookshelf.