Recovering the Piedmont Past
Subtitle: unexplored moments in nineteenth-century upcountry South Carolina history
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9781611172539
Description: This book is a window into the social and cultural life of the South Carolina upcountry during the nineteenth century. The history of South Carolina's lowcountry has been well documented by historians, but the upcountry -- the region of the state north and west of Columbia and the geologic fall line -- has only recently begun to receive extensive scholarly attention. The essays in this collection provide a window into the social and cultural life of the upstate during the nineteenth century. The contributors explore topics such as the history of education in the region, post-Civil War occupation by Union troops, upcountry tourism, Freedman's Bureau's efforts to educate African Americans, and the complex dynamics of lynch mobs in the late nineteenth century. Recovering the Piedmont Past illustrates larger trends of social transformation occurring in the region at a time that shaped religion, education, race relations, and the economy well into the twentieth century. The essays add depth and complexity to our understanding of nineteenth-century Southern history and challenge accepted narratives about a homogeneous South. Ultimately each of the eight essays explores little-known facets of the history of upcountry South Carolina in the nineteenth century. The collection includes a foreword by Orville Vernon Burton, professor of history and director of the Cyberinstitute at Clemson University. - Publisher.
Table of contents: title: Foreword / Orville Vernon Burton; title: Introduction / Timothy P. Grady and Melissa Walker; title: Mineral water, dancing, and amusements : the development of tourism in the nineteenth-century Upcountry / Melissa Walker; title: "Education has breathed over the scene" : Robert H. Reid and the Reidville schools, 1857-1905 / Timothy P. Grady; title: Prelude to Little Bighorn : the Seventh U.S. Cavalry in the South Carolina Upcountry / Andrew H. Myers; title: "At present we have no school at all which is truly unfortunate" : freedmen and schools in Abbeville County, 1865-1875 / Katherine D. Cann; title: From slavery to freedom : African American life in post-Civil War Spartanburg / Diane C. Vecchio; title: African Americans and the Presbyterian Church : the Clinton Presbyterian Church and Sloan's Chapel / Nancy Snell Griffith; title: "Murder takes the angel shape of justice" : rape, reputation, and retribution in nineteenth-century Spartanburg / Carol Loar; title: "May the Lord keep down hard feelings" : the Woodrow evolution controversy and the 1884 Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina / Robert B. McCormick