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Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 » (ILLUSTRATED)

Book cover image of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner

Authors: Eric Foner, Richard B. Morris (Introduction), Henry Steele Commager
ISBN-13: 9780060937164, ISBN-10: 0060937165
Format: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: February 2002
Edition: ILLUSTRATED

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Author Biography: Eric Foner

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations Used in Footnotesxiii
Editors' Introductionxv
Prefacexvii
1.The World the War Made1
The Coming of Emancipation1
The Inner Civil War11
The North's Transformation18
2.Rehearsals for Reconstruction35
Dilemmas of Wartime Reconstruction35
Land and Labor During the Civil War50
The Politics of Emancipation and the End of the War60
3.The Meaning of Freedom77
From Slavery to Freedom78
Building the Black Community88
The Economics of Freedom102
Origins of Black Politics110
Violence and Everyday Life119
4.Ambiguities of Free Labor124
Masters Without Slaves128
The "Misrepresented Bureau"142
The Freedmen's Bureau, Land, and Labor153
Beginnings of Economic Reconstruction170
5.The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction176
Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction176
Launching the South's New Governments185
The Anatomy of Presidential Reconstruction198
The North's Response216
6.The Making of Radical Reconstruction228
The Radical Republicans228
Origins of Civil Rights239
The Fourteenth Amendment251
The Campaign of 1866261
The Coming of Black Suffrage271
7.Blueprints for a Republican South281
The Political Mobilization of the Black Community281
The Republican Coalition291
The North and Radical Reconstruction307
The Constitutional Conventions316
Impeachment and the Election of Grant333
8.Reconstruction: Political and Economic346
Party and Government in the Reconstruction South346
Southern Republicans in Power364
The Gospel of Prosperity379
Patterns of Economic Change392
9.The Challenge of Enforcement412
The New Departure and the First Redemption412
The Ku Klux Klan425
"Power from Without"444
10.The Reconstruction of the North460
The North and the Age of Capital461
The Transformation of Politics469
The Rise of Liberalism488
The Election of 1872499
11.The Politics of Depression512
The Depression and Its Consequences512
Retreat from Reconstruction524
The Waning of Southern Republicanism535
The Crisis of 1875553
12.Redemption and After564
The Centennial Election564
The Electoral Crisis and the End of Reconstruction575
The Redeemers' New South587
Epilogue: "The River Has Its Bend"602
Acknowledgments613
Selected Bibliography615
Index643

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