GENERAL WORKS
Some of the older books are interesting from the historical standpoint, but conditions in the South have changed so rapidly that these works give little help in understanding the present. Among the most interesting are A. W. Tourgée's Appeal to Caesar (1884), based upon the belief that the South would soon be overwhelmingly black. Alexander K. McClure, in The South; its Industrial, Financial and Political Condition (1886), was one of the first to take a hopeful view of the economic development of the Southern States. W. D. Kelley's The Old South and the New (1887) contains the observations of a shrewd Pennsylvania politician who was intensely interested in the economic development of the United States. Walter H. Page's The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths (1902) is a keen analysis of the factors which have hindered progress in the South.
No recent work fully covers this period. Most books deal chiefly with individual phases of the question. Some valuable material may be found in the series The South in the Building of the Nation, 13 vols., (1909-13) but not all of this information is trustworthy. The Library of Southern Literature (16 vols., 1907-1913), edited by E. A. Alderman and Joel Chandler Harris, contains selections from Southern authors and biographical notes. Albert Bushnell Hart's The Southern South (1910) is the result of more study and investigation than any other Northerner has given to the sociology of the South, but the author's prejudices interfere with the value of his conclusions. The late Edgar Gardner Murphy in Problems of the Present South (1904) discusses with wisdom and sanity many Southern questions which are still undecided. A series of valuable though unequal papers is The New South in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 35 (1910). Another coöperative work which contains material of value is Studies in Southern History and Politics, edited by J. W. Garner (1914). Why the Solid South, edited by H. A. Herbert (1890), should also be consulted. A bitter arraignment of the South as a whole is H. E. Tremain's Sectionalism Unmasked (1907). The best book on the Appalachian South is Horace Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders (1913). William Garrott Brown's The Lower South in American History (1902) contains some interesting matter.