The new south comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910

This first book-length examination of cultural change in the Georgia Pine Belt challenges the conventional view of this area as an unchanging economic backwater by examining its postbellum evolution from a self-sufficient economy to one largely dependent upon a single commercial crop - cotton. Before the Civil War, the Piney Woods easily supported a population of mostly yeomen farmers and livestock herders.

After the war, a variety of external forces invaded the region, permanently altering the social, political, and economic landscape. Mark V. Wetherington's in-depth study sheds new light on the region's socioeconomic history and encourages a closer examination of post-Civil War change throughout the southern Pine Belt.