Comparative Book Review: Origins of The New South by C. Vann Woodward and Freedom's Lawmakers by Eric Foner

Two books that give the reader a view of the reconstruction era in the south and its policies are Origins of the New South by C. Vann Woodward and Freedom’s Lawmakers by Eric Foner. All though these two books differ in their writing content and their themes, they make strong points about the reconstruction era in the South and the mistreatment of African Americans living in new found freedom.
The authors of these two books, Woodward and Foner, differ in many ways also. Woodward writes with passion and persuasion in Origins of the New South and tries to convince the reader that the New South demonstrated that the economic and political leadership of the southern redeemers had been marked by corruption and that blacks and poor whites had been kept in poverty. Woodward argues “that after 1900 the South was safely set on a national road to peace, progress and prosperity was incorrect, but it was still behind due to the lack of redeemers and old southern values that put bla...