Occupationally, historians cannot leave any period of the past alone. They must rewrite history because their primary concern is to interpret it and to discern its meaning for the present. Since the present is constantly changing, so must the meaning which the past holds for the historian. To say that, let me hasten to add, is not to suggest or even to imply that the past is fictional or that history, as Voltaire said, is merely a pack of tricks played upon the dead. For only by rooting his interpretations in the facts and actual events of the past can a historian's new interpretation or meaning be convincing to others. The historian, like the physicist or the biologist, does more than merely rummage among his documents until he arrives at his conclusions. All investigators, regardless of field, start out with some idea of what they want to test or expect to find. For example, it was the great civil rights crusade of the 1950's and 1960's which sparked the massive inquiry among historians into the nature of Southern slavery, thereby enriching our understanding of the impact of bondage on blacks and the effects of slavery upon the Southern economy.

Although that particular historical inquiry seems about to run out of steam, another foray into Southern history is gathering momentum and beginning to change our conception of the South's past. In a sense, this new exploration is an extension of the recent involvement of historians with the nature of slavery, for now the years after the Civil War have come under scrutiny. The concern, however, is not with politics or the traditional aspects of Reconstruction but with the rather basic changes in the economy. Notable in this new literature is a