Silverman, Jason H.

Dr. Jason H. Silverman is Professor of History at Winthrop University and a former South Carolina Governor’s Professor of the Year. Author or editor of nine previous books, he is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Dr. Silverman previously taught at Yale University.

Immigration in the American South 1864-1895

2006 0-7734-5725-9
After the Civil War, the southern states experienced a decline in the labor force, particularly those needed to work the fields. Consequently, the South gathered together to recruit immigrants, both foreign as well as domestic. This book examines these efforts, focusing on major southern immigration conventions and their objectives and accomplishments.

During the last years of the 1860s, the individual southern states were occupied publishing descriptive handbooks expounding the reasons to relocate to their state. In 1876, 14 states gathered at a convention in New Orleans to address the issue of immigration. In 1883, the Southern Immigration Association of America was formed under the leadership of A.J. McWhirter. The following year, this organization held a three-day convention in Nashville. In 1888, the Southern Interstate Immigration Association held the first of at least three conventions in the town of Montgomery, followed in 1890 at Asheville and again in 1894 at Augusta.

Included in this book are proceedings of the Southern Immigration Association Convention and the first convention of the Southern Interstate Immigration Association. Newspaper coverage of these major conventions and other smaller conventions is included. As the southern railroads played a major part in immigration efforts, this book also includes information on their role and activities in encouraging immigrants to relocate to southern states. In the concluding chapter, state-by-state charts analyze the state population statistics from 1870 to 1900.

RELIEF AND RECOVERY IN POST CIVIL WAR SOUTH CAROLINA A Death by Inches

1997 0-7734-8437-X
In this study of relief and recovery efforts in South Carolina after the Civil War, the emphasis is on people, and in particular on those people who seem to be excluded from, or barely mentioned in, the conventional studies of the era. By delving deep into the primary source material of the period, this study allows readers to discover an expanded past, one that for the most part has remained as 'hidden history.'