Hi Fred Hudson,   Thank you for registering for "JCWE Historian Talk - The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward".  Please submit any questions to: mri113@psu.edu Date Time: Jan 14, 2021 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)  Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:  Natalie J. Ring Sarah E. Gardner Editors of The Last Lectures of C. Vann Woodward Webinar Hosts: Greg Downs and Kate Masur Notes Rediscovered lectures amongst the Woodward papers at Yale University Great insight into the process of producing historiography. Allowed the editors to see a great historian at work including abandoning projects. Woodward's work mainly fits into the historiography of the 50's and 60's. One of the editors refers seeing his work in progress as sausage making. I enjoy seeing so many books in the backgrounds of the editors in Zoom. These essays are like drafts: they need a lot of polishing. How historians think and work. Much discussion on how Woodward worked for years on a big book on Reconstruction which was never written. He was caught up in the Reconstruction revisionism of the 60's and 70's. Ultimately Eric Foner beat him to the punch. Surprisingly Woodward did not like archival work.  How could this be? He was a lousy, sloppy, footnoter. His Reconstruction book was to have been a FU to Origins. Reconstruction was a big failure---one of Woodward's major points. The Radical Republicans did not go far enough. Northern states had segregation in place before Jim Crow took over the South. Woodward did a lot work on Southern dissenters meaning Southern liberals like himself. So Northern states had segregation in place already. But the failure of Reconstruction was not inevitable. Historiography and currents were changing during the time he was planning his big Reconstruction book Origins is based on archival research. His heart was not into archival research. Lots of self-doubt and personal tragedies. Big thing: he was a presentist historian. He would embrace comparing the present to the past. Failed to include and embrace black agency. Only talked about white liberals. Inability to include black agency. Pulled a lot from secondary sources. 1872 amnesty ended Reconstruction for Woodward. There should have been land redistribution. RR did not do nearly enough. Wouldn't be surprised by Trumpism. Action and reactions.] Always a backlash.