The aftermath of the Civil War comes to dramatic life in this sweeping new collection of firsthand writing from the Reconstruction era—featuring pieces by Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, and more “Very, very good. . . . Reconstruction conveys the struggle for racial equality better than many other anthologies documenting the era.” —The Wall Street Journal Few periods in American history are more consequential but less understood than Reconstruction, the tumultuous twelve years after Appomattox, when the battered nation sought to reconstitute itself and confront the legacy of two centuries of slavery. This anthology brings together more than one hundred contemporary letters, diary entries, interviews, testimonies, and articles by ordinary men and women and well-known figures such as Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Andrew Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, Ulysses S. Grant, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, and Albion Tourgée. Through their eyes readers experience the fierce contest between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans resulting in the nation's first presidential impeachment; the adoption of the revolutionary 14th and 15th Amendments; the first achievements of black political power; and the murderous terrorism of the Klan and other groups that, combined with northern weariness, indifference, and hostility, eventually resulted in the restoration of white supremacy in the South. Throughout, Americans confront the essential questions left unresolved by the defeat of secession: What system of labor would replace slavery, and what would become of the southern plantations? Would the war end in the restoration of a union of sovereign states, or in the creation of a truly national government? What would citizenship mean after emancipation, and what civil rights would the freed people gain? Would suffrage be extended to African American men, and to all women?

Reconstruction: A Concise History' is a gracefully-written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re-integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into the American Union after the Civil War, to bring African Americans into the political mainstream of American life, and to recreate the Southern economy after a Northern, free-labor model.

This volume traces the principal developments during the Era of Reconstruction in America. Beginning with wartime efforts to restore the Southern States, it illustrates the difficulties facing the nation during the postwar period. The author stresses the baneful effects of the controversy between Andrew Johnson, a President essentially unsympathetic to the aspirations of the blacks, and the increasingly radical Congress. The temporary triumph of radical Reconstruction was not sweeping enough to prevent the gradual erosion by the Republican influence in the South under Grant and Hayes - the efforts to uplift the freedmen were beset by innumerable obstacles, how the radicals, though finally overcome, still succeeded in embedding some of their ideas in the three postwar amendments to the Constitution - these are some of the subjects highlighted. With the aid of twenty-six documents, Professor Trefousse emphasizes the problem of integrating the Negro into American society and he shows that this principle was one of the main issues of the Reconstruction struggle. --from back cover.

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality-in the face of murderous violence-in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and thirteen years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively. In South Carolina, only twenty years after the death of arch-secessionist John C. Calhoun, a black man, Jasper J. Wright, took a seat on the state's Supreme Court. Not even the most optimistic abolitionists thought such milestones would occur in their lifetimes. The brief years of Reconstruction marked the United States' most progressive moment prior to the civil rights movement. Previous histories of Reconstruction have focused on Washington politics. But in this sweeping, prodigiously researched narrative, Douglas Egerton brings a much bigger, even more dramatic story into view, exploring state and local politics and tracing the struggles of some fifteen hundred African-American officeholders, in both the North and South, who fought entrenched white resistance. Tragically, their movement was met by ruthless violence-not just riotous mobs, but also targeted assassination. With stark evidence, Egerton shows that Reconstruction, often cast as a “failure” or a doomed experiment, was rolled back by murderous force. The Wars of Reconstruction is a major and provocative contribution to American history.

VOICES FROM THE RECONSTRUCTION YEARS, 1865-1877 is a collection of twenty-seven first-hand accounts from those who lived through this turbulent period in American history. Newspaper articles, personal letters, and diary entries bring the reader into direct contact with some of the Americans who were deeply affected by the Reconstruction era. Chronologically arranged and framed with invaluable commentary and biographical sketches, this text offers unique insight into the heroic personalities and devistating aftermath of the Reconstruction period.

Presents over one hundred newspaper and magazine articles and book excerpts that chronicle the Civil Rights movement from 1941 to 1963, and includes a chronology, journalist biographies, and photographs.