Reconstruction Updated Edition: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-18

Front Cover
Harper Collins, Dec 2, 2014 - History - 752 pages

From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America.

Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed.

Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; 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.

This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today.

 

Contents

Dedication
Introduction to the 2014 Anniversary Edition
Rehearsals for Reconstruction
The Meaning of Freedom
Ambiguities of Free Labor
The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction
The Making of Radical Reconstruction
Blueprints for a Republican South
The Challenge of Enforcement
The Reconstruction of the North
The Politics of Depression
Redemption and After
Picture section
Epilogue
Index
Acknowledgments

Political and Economic

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About the author (2014)

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and the author of several books. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians. He lives in New York City.

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