Nation within a Nation: The American South and the Federal Government

“Original, illuminating, and provocative, Nation within a Nation is certain to challenge those who deny southern exceptionalism. These essays show the complexity, hypocrisy, and, yes, perversion in this tortured relationship.”—Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln

“Feldman has put together an impressive array of scholars who intelligently analyze the peculiar, somewhat dysfunctional, somewhat hypocritical relationship of the South to the federal government.”—Ralph Young, author of Dissent in America: The Voices That Shaped a Nation

“Documents the many complex nuances that make the relationship between the South and the federal government such a compelling story. Writing against the historiographical grain, collectively these essays support the idea of southern distinctiveness, a distinctiveness born out of persistent resentment to all things emanating from Washington.”—Kari Frederickson, coeditor of Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida

From the Constitutional Convention to the Civil War to the civil rights movement, the South has exerted an outsized influence on American government and history while being distinctly anti-government. While southern states have profited immensely from federal projects, tax expenditures, and public spending, the region’s relationship with the central government and the courts can, at the best of times, be described as contentious.

Nation within a Nation features cutting-edge work by lead scholars in the fields of history, political science, and human geography who examine the causes—real and perceived—of the South’s perpetual state of rebellion, which remains one of its most defining characteristics.