Mercer University Press Search Results

Thomas R. R. Cobb (1823-1862), a Georgia jurist who, perhaps more than any other one person, influenced the form that the “second revolution” took in Georgia (1860-1861), has been described as a prototype of a Southern intellectual. A product of the “Old South,” Cobb’s influence upon national events (up to and during the Civil War, especially in Georgia) was considerable. Cobb was a “representative Southerner” whose ideas “expressed the trends then current in Southern thought.” This investigation of the life and influence of Thomas R. R. Cobb provides significant insight into the attitudes of his time. Cobb’s multifaceted involvements--in legal, educational, and moral reform; revivalism; the “positive good defense” of slavery; secession; and the Civil War--make him a doubly interesting important figure worthy of serious investigation. The present study is just such a serious, well-researched, and well-written investigation of Cobb, and amply provides further insight into the life and times of that “Late Great Unpleasantness” (secession and Civil War) that is such an important part of the history of the United States.

Heartbreaking and true, The Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 details human courage and perseverance in the face of the second most fatal hurricane in US history. On a Sunday evening in August 1893, a massive hurricane slammed into South Carolina and Georgia at high tide. The howling winds and pounding waters struck hardest at the Gullah communities along the coastal islands. Stunned by the sudden fury of the storm, the island dwellers took extraordinary measures to protect themselves. Clearly, they were no match for what many referred to as the “cyclone.” By the time the waters ebbed and the winds subsided, 2,000 or more had drowned and tens of thousands were left homeless, hungry, and destitute. Neither the US Congress nor South Carolina’s state legislature appropriated funds to assist the stricken people. Fortunately, Clara Barton, founder and president of the American Red Cross, took charge. In the first hurricane relief and recovery effort of the Red Cross, individuals and private charities sustained the survivors with grits and pork for almost a year. Rebuilding homes, food supplies, and spirits was a long arduous process. For the next sixty years, residents of one community held vigils every August, praying to be spared from such a catastrophe ever again.

Georgia Native Plant Guide is the first native plant guide that focuses on Georgia. It is not simply a guide to plants that can be found in Georgia, but those native to Georgia. Each species native to the Peach State is listed by its scientific name and given a brief description of its appearance and attributes. A beautiful and helpful book, it is for anyone interested in the environment, Georgia, or the natural world around us.

This book is the first full-length objective study of Confederate general W. H. T. Walker. Drawing on personal papers, official documents, and eyewitness accounts, Brown has written a biography of a Confederate general who also fought in the Seminole and Mexican wars, and who could be concerned with family decorum issues at home one moment and the next with battlefield strategies. Walker was a complex individual who was killed during the Atlanta campaign of 1864.

This classic book on the Governors of Georgia is now available including the governorships of Zell Miller, Roy Barnes, and Sonny Perdue. Perfect for class-room use, this readable and reliable text is newly typeset and includes new photographs.

More than Precious Memories is a collection of essays offering scholarly analysis and interpretation of Southern Gospel music. Other issues touched on include the Gaither Homecoming songbooks, theodicy, identity construction, Thomas A. Dorsey, postmodernity, and the Internet.

A longitudinal study of race relations in a major southern city, Macon Black and White examines the ways white and black Maconites interacted over the course of the entire twentieth century. Beginning in the 1890s, in what has been called the "nadir of race relations in America," Andrew M. Manis traces the arduous journey toward racial equality in the heart of Central Georgia. The book describes how, despite incremental progress toward that goal, segrega-tionist pressures sought to silence voices for change on both sides of the color line. Providing a snapshot of black-white relations for every decade of the twentieth century, this compellingly written story highlights the ways indigenous develop-ments in Macon combined with other statewide, regional, and national factors to shape the struggle for and against racial equality. Manis shows how both African- Americans and a cadre of white moderates, separately and at timestogether, gradually increased pressure for change in a conservative Georgia city. Showcasing how disfranchisement, lynching, interracial efforts toward the humanization of segregation, the world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement affected the pace of change, Manis describes the eventual rise of a black polit-ical class and the election of Macon's first African-American mayor. The book uses demographic realities as well as the perspectives of black and white Maconites to paint a portrait of contemporary black-white relations in the city. Manis concludes with suggestions on how the city might continue the struggle for racial justice and overcome the "unutterable separation" that still plagues Macon in the early years of a new century. Macon Black and White is a pow-erful story that no one interested in racial change over time can afford to miss.

Murder Along the Cape Fear is the story of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, during the twentieth century. Engagingly told, this book is a wonderful blend of history, lore, and murder.

Willie Perkins left the staid, conservative world of commercial bank auditing to jump headlong into the burgeoning beginnings of The Allman Brothers Band and follows their meteoric and sometimes tragic rise, fall, and revival. Perkins’s interest in the business of music and his association with an interesting pair of friends led him to the opportunity to work with the Allmans at the earliest stage of their career. For the first time we learn from a true insider what it was like to live the nomadic life on the road with the Allman brothers.

What you do not know about Georgia’s greatest athletes and some of its leading citizens you will learn in Gene Asher’s Legends. These and formerly untold stories of Georgia Bulldog immortal Charley Trippi, eighty-six-year-old Furman Bisher, who continues to be one of the most prolific sports columnists in America, and Lee Burge, the man who went from the mailroom to the boardroom of Equifax are among many other sports and civic greats included in Gene Asher’s Legends.

In The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century, agricultural scientist R. Harold Brown argues that while there is much left to do in environmental preservation, Georgia's environment is better than any time in the previous 100 years, despite the industrial and residential developement and a near quadrupling of the population at the end of the twentieth century. Since the 1940s, topsoil erosion has been reduced to a minor problem, forests now cover at least three million more acres, and wetlands appear nearly as extensive as in colonial days. Industrial growth increased pollution of streams, but dumping of untreated waste has been stopped, water-related human diseases have virtually disappeared, and fish have returned. Atlanta's air is clearer than at mid-century when there were four times the concentration of particles and sulfur dioxide. No air pollutant is higher than in the 1970s and most are much lower. Georgia's water and air are the cleanest they have been in fifty years. Wildlife is more plentiful and diverse; the white-tail deer population has increased to nuisance levels, new species of songbirds have moved into the state, and the bluebird population has increased nearly five percent each year since 1966.