Utilizing biographical, demographic, political, social, and cultural approaches, the nine essays in this book provide a probing look at the South's diversity and its important place in the national past. The authors explore the tension between the South's well-worn mythic images and the diversity that bred such influential leaders as Philip Mazzei, Henry Clay, A. B. Happy Chandler, and John Sherman Cooper. The chapters illustrate the South's complexity in assessing the region's plain folk, slave panics, military strategy, racial reform, and temperance movement. The book untangles the...