Triumph of the new South : independent movements in post-reconstruction politics

"Triumph of the New South: Independent Movements in Post-Reconstruction Politics" examines Southern independent political movements during the postReconstruction period. It compares the Readjuster Movement in Virginia with its less successful counterparts in the rest of the region. The dissertation is divided into two sections. The first section follows the course of the Readjuster Movement in Virginia with emphasis on the Eastern Shore counties of Accomac and Northampton. It shows how a controversy within the dominant Conservative (Democratic) Party over the state debt created the Readjuster insurgency and explains how that insurgency evolved under the leadership of United States Senator William Mahone first into a coalition with black Republicans and then into a political institution. The second section describes Republican President Chester A. Arthur's Southern policy, explores the origins of Southern independentism, and, focusing on the congressional elections of 1882 when Arthur threw his support behind several of the insurgencies, analyzes the movements in each of those states. The conclusion .compares the Readjusters with the independents and with the Populists of the 1890s.

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Digitization of this thesis was made possible by a generous grant from the Jefferson Trust, 2015.

Thesis originally deposited on 2016-04-22 in version 1.28 of Libra. This thesis was migrated to Libra2 on 2017-03-23 16:37:13.