Staff Picks
Reconstruction Reconsidered
- Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Collection
With the April 9 premiere of Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s new PBS television series Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, interest is high in this controversial period in American history. Check out these absorbing titles (several by historians featured in the program, including Gates himself) on Reconstruction and its lingering consequences.
South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras
Essays from the Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association
Published in 2016
The Wars of Reconstruction
The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era
Published in 2014
A history of the Reconstruction years, which marked the United States' most progressive moment prior to the Civil Rights movement, tells the stories of the African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality after the Civil War.
Reconstruction
America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
Published in 2014
Historian Eric Foner chronicles the way in which Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. He addresses the quest of emancipated slaves searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society, the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations, and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.
Stony the Road
Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
Published in 2019
Chronicles America's post-Civil War struggle for racial equality and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated black Americans throughout the twentieth century, as seen through the visual culture of the era.
Reconstruction
A Concise History
Published in 2018
"This concise history delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on American social fabric. [The author] depicts Reconstruction as a "bourgeois revolution" -- as the attempted extension of the free-labor ideology embodied by Lincoln and the Republican Party to what was perceived as a Southern region gone awry from the Founders' intention in the pursuit of Romantic aristocracy"-- Provided by publisher.
The Day Freedom Died
The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
Published in 2008
Capital Dames
The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868
Published in 2015
"Roberts marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by offering a ... look at Washington, D.C., and the experiences, influence, and contributions of its women during this momentous period of American history"--Amazon.com.
The Long Reconstruction
The Post-Civil War South in History, Film, and Memory
Published in 2014
"A century and a half after the Civil War, Americans are still dealing with the legacies of the conflict and Reconstruction, including the many myths and legends spawned by these events. The Long Reconstruction: The Post-Civil War South in History, Film, and Memory brings together history and popular culture to explore how the events of this era have been remembered. Looking at popular cinema across the last hundred years, The Long Reconstruction uncovers central themes in the history of Reconstruction, including violence and terrorism; the experiences of African Americans and those of women and children; the Lost Cause ideology; and the economic reconstruction of the American South. Analyzing influential films such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, as well as more recent efforts such as Cold Mountain and Lincoln, the authors show how the myths surrounding Reconstruction have impacted American culture." -- Publisher's description.
The Republic for Which It Stands
The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896
Published in 2017
"During Reconstruction Northerners attempted to remake the United States in their own image. They would make incarnate the new world Republicans imagined at the end of the Civil War. That new world seemed possible because the Republican Party controlled the Union in 1865 as fully as any political party would ever control the country. Reconstruction would produce a nation built around free labor with a homogenous citizenry whose rights would be guaranteed by a newly empowered federal government. Black as well as white citizens would inhabit a largely Protestant country of independent producers. They never realized that dream. The government's attempts to implement this vision confronted significant obstacles. Southern whites successfully resisted, and Indians resisted with far less success. Freedpeople both grasped the opportunities that the Republican vision offered them and attempted to articulate their own version of republican America. The United States became a nation of immigrants, Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant. New technologies transformed the economy, as Americans significantly shifted into wage workers instead of independent producers. Capitalism produced the very rich and the very poor. The Gilded Age thrived where Reconstruction failed, the template of American modernity. The era was full of paradoxes. Notoriously corrupt, it also formed a seedbed of reform. It spawned racial, religious, and social conflicts as deep as the country had seen to date, but a newly diverse nation emerged. The newest volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands offers a magisterial account of the Gilded Age's real legacy that lies buried beneath its capitalists of legend and its corrupt politicians."--Provided by publisher.