Yankee Town, Southern City, The American Social Experience

“Insightful . . . The best portrait yet of the elusive and seldom understood world of laboring class culture before, during, and just after the Civil War.” —Crandall Shifflett, H-CivWar

One of the most hotly debated issues in the historical study of race relations is the question of how the Civil War and Reconstruction affected social relations in the South. Did the War leave class and race hierarchies intact? Or did it mark the profound disruption of a long-standing social order?

Yankee Town, Southern City examines how the members of the southern community of Lynchburg, Virginia experienced four distinct but overlapping events—Secession, Civil War, Black Emancipation, and Reconstruction. By looking at life in the grog shop, at the military encampment, on the street corner, and on the shop floor, Steven Elliott Tripp illustrates the way in which ordinary people influenced the contours of race and class relations in their town.

“A richly textured social history . . . a nuanced portrait of white class and cultural stratification in one southern town and the intersections of those divisions with the broader racial barrier that dominated both ante- and postbellum Lynchburg.” —The Journal of Southern History

“A readable and interesting book that . . . provides a vivid portrait of the evolution of one southern city during this trying period. It is a most worthy contribution to the literature of the South and to urban history generally.” —John Ingham, Journal of American History