Introduction

This introduction provides a background of C. Vann Woodward and his career, as well as an overview of his lectures on the history of white antebellum southern nonconformists, the immediate consequences of emancipation, and the history of Reconstruction in the years prior to the Compromise of 1877. The Fleming Lectures at Louisiana State University document the alienation of white southerners who challenged the proslavery orthodoxy of their friends and families and ultimately fled to the North seeking a more tolerable climate. The Messenger Lectures at Cornell University and the Storrs Lectures at Yale University Law School highlight Woodward's interpretation of Reconstruction. In addition to these lectures, Woodward spent more than a decade intermittently researching and thinking about writing a history of Reconstruction meant to be the equal of Origins of the New South (1951). This collection reveals Woodward’s intellectual process as he grappled with and ultimately failed to attain his goals.