Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the American South

Surveying the entire span of southern political history, Michael Perman takes a revealing and wide-ranging approach to the region's politics. During the nineteenth century, the South experienced nearly continuous political crisis from nullification through secession, war, and Reconstruction, concluding with the disfranchisement campaigns at century's end. The struggle for power took a different form in the twentieth century, as the South's political class forged the Solid South and then maneuvered to perpetuate its control within the region and its influence within the nation.But there was also continuity within this pattern of discord and crisis. First, southern politics generated--to a degree not found elsewhere in the United States--a remarkable array of unusual and colorful politicians, such as John C. Calhoun, William Mahone, James K. Vardaman, Huey Long, George Wallace, and Lyndon Johnson. Even more significant was the lack of a competitive, two-party politics for