Reconstruction

by Foner, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780060937164
• ISBN10: 0060937165
• Edition: Illus.
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-08
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

This "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) made history when it was originally published in 1988. It redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) has since gone on to become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period -- an era whose legacy reverberates still today in the United States.

Author Biography

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University, is the author of numerous works on American history, including Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; and The Story of American Freedom. He has served as president of both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, and has been named Scholar of the Year by the New York Council for the Humanities

Table of Contents

Abbreviations Used in Footnotes	xiii
Editors' Introduction	xv
Preface	xvii
The World the War Made	1	(34)
The Coming of Emancipation	1	(10)
The Inner Civil War	11	(7)
The North's Transformation	18	(17)
Rehearsals for Reconstruction	35	(42)
Dilemmas of Wartime Reconstruction	35	(15)
Land and Labor During the Civil War	50	(10)
The Politics of Emancipation and the End of the War	60	(17)
The Meaning of Freedom	77	(47)
From Slavery to Freedom	78	(10)
Building the Black Community	88	(14)
The Economics of Freedom	102	(8)
Origins of Black Politics	110	(9)
Violence and Everyday Life	119	(5)
Ambiguities of Free Labor	124	(52)
Masters Without Slaves	128	(14)
The ``Misrepresented Bureau''	142	(11)
The Freedmen's Bureau, Land, and Labor	153	(17)
Beginnings of Economic Reconstruction	170	(6)
The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction	176	(52)
Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction	176	(9)
Launching the South's New Governments	185	(13)
The Anatomy of Presidential Reconstruction	198	(18)
The North's Response	216	(12)
The Making of Radical Reconstruction	228	(53)
The Radical Republicans	228	(11)
Origins of Civil Rights	239	(12)
The Fourteenth Amendment	251	(10)
The Campaign of 1866	261	(10)
The Coming of Black Suffrage	271	(10)
Blueprints for a Republican South	281	(65)
The Political Mobilization of the Black Community	281	(10)
The Republican Coalition	291	(16)
The North and Radical Reconstruction	307	(9)
The Constitutional Conventions	316	(17)
Impeachment and the Election of Grant	333	(13)
Reconstruction: Political and Economic	346	(66)
Party and Government in the Reconstruction South	346	(18)
Southern Republicans in Power	364	(15)
The Gospel of Prosperity	379	(13)
Patterns of Economic Change	392	(20)
The Challenge of Enforcement	412	(48)
The New Departure and the First Redemption	412	(13)
The Ku Klux Klan	425	(19)
``Power from Without''	444	(16)
The Reconstruction of the North	460	(52)
The North and the Age of Capital	461	(8)
The Transformation of Politics	469	(19)
The Rise of Liberalism	488	(11)
The Election of 1872	499	(13)
The Politics of Depression	512	(52)
The Depression and Its Consequences	512	(12)
Retreat from Reconstruction	524	(11)
The Waning of Southern Republicanism	535	(18)
The Crisis of 1875	553	(11)
Redemption and After	564	(38)
The Centennial Election	564	(11)
The Electoral Crisis and the End of Reconstruction	575	(12)
The Redeemers' New South	587	(15)
Epilogue: ``The River Has Its Bend''	602	(11)
Acknowledgments	613	(2)
Selected Bibliography	615	(28)
Index	643