In telling the story of the North Carolina Railroad's independent years (1849-71), Trelease covers all aspects of the company and its development, including its construction and rolling stock; its management, labor force, and labor policies; its passenger and freight operations; and its role in the Civil War. He also assesses the impact of the railroad on the economic and social development of North Carolina. Originally published in 1991. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Before the Civil War, William Johnston served as president of Charlotte's first railroad, the Charlotte & SC Railroad. After the war, he rebuilt that line and extended it to Augusta, GA, creating the fastest route between New York and the deep South. He was instrumental in connecting Charlotte by rail early to two seaports, Charleston and Wilmington, allowing the small village to grow rapidly. After retiring from railroad management, he served four terms as a transformative Mayor of Charlotte, built the popular Buford Hotel for the region's rail and mill leaders, and co-organized the Commercial National Bank which, through mergers, evolved into today's Bank of America. Beyond these economic contributions, William Johnston successfully proposed an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution to broaden the state's religious tolerance, and also oversaw the creation of Charlotte's first grade school for African-American children. (Recipient of a 2020 Award of Excellence from the North Carolina Society of Historians)

In 1882, William Simpson Pearson, writing under the pseudonym Brinsley Matthews, published Well-Nigh Reconstructed, a thinly disguised autobiographical novel excoriating the enormous societal changes that had beset the former Confederacy during Reconstruction. Pearson’s work was especially notable in that the author was a onetime Radical Republican and supporter of Ulysses S. Grant’s bid for the presidency. A product of Pearson’s perception that northern Reconstruction policies had devastated his native North Carolina, the book set in motion a genre of politically motivated novels that would culminate near the turn of the twentieth century with Thomas Nelson Page’s Red Rock and later Thomas Dixon Jr.’s infamous The Clansman. Though set in Virginia and Alabama, it is clear that Well-Nigh Reconstructed drew heavily on Pearson’s own experiences and that it was conceived as a direct response to A Fool’s Errand, a pro-Reconstruction novel by fellow North Carolinian Albion Tourgée. Echoing Pearson’s own disillusionment with the Radical Republicans, the novel’s protagonist, Archie Moran, comes to see Radical Reconstruction as an attempt to turn the South into a carbon copy of the North, and through a series of encounters involving corrupt carpetbaggers, greedy politicians, and the Klan trials of the late 1870s, Moran grows weary of politics altogether and resigns his Republican Party affiliation. For Pearson and his doppelganger, Moran, Reconstruction became a vast breeding ground for corruption. Featuring an extensive introduction by historian Paul D. Yandle, who sets the political and regional scene of Reconstruction North Carolina, this reissue of Well-Nigh Reconstructed will shed new light on the ways in which sectionalism, regionalism, and the embrace of white supremacy tended to undermine the recently reconstituted Union among Appalachian residents.

During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson. Iron Confederacies uses the history of southern railways to explore linkages among the themes of states' rights, racial violence, labor strife, and big business in the nineteenth-century South. By 1868, Ku Klux Klan leaders had begun mobilizing white resentment against rapid economic change by asserting that railroad consolidation led to political corruption and black economic success. As Nelson notes, some of the Klan's most violent activity was concentrated along the Richmond-Atlanta rail corridor. But conflicts over railroads were eventually resolved, he argues, in agreements between northern railroad barons and Klan leaders that allowed white terrorism against black voters while surrendering states' control over the southern economy.

One of the most dramatic episodes in American history was the attempt to establish a two-party political system in the South during Reconstruction. Historians, however, have never systematically analyzed the region's political process during that era. Michael Perman undertakes this task, arguing that the key to understanding Reconstruction politics can be found in the factions that developed inside the two parties. Not only did these factions play a crucial role in determining each party's policies and electoral strategies, but they also shaped the course of the South's overall political development during this critical period. In the first section of Road to Redemption, Perman offers a provocative and original analysis of the characteristics and priorities of the two parties, explaining how the South's untried and volatile party system operated during Reconstruction. By the mid-1870s this system had begun to collapse. The book's concluding section explains how and why the Republican party and Reconstruction were overthrown and describes the Democratic ascendancy that replaced them. Perman's innovative study integrates the history of Reconstruction and Redemption and challenges the prevailing interpretation of who the Redeemers were and how they rose to power.

The most comprehensive state project of its kind, the Dictionary provides information on some 4,000 notable North Carolinians whose accomplishments and occasional misdeeds span four centuries. Much of the bibliographic information found in the six volumes has been compiled for the first time. All of the persons included are deceased. They are native North Carolinians, no matter where they made the contributions for which they are noted, or non-natives whose contributions were made in North Carolina.

Thomas Lanier Clingman: Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains is the first book-length biography of one of the most important, colorful, and controversial figures in nineteenth-century American life. A man of enormous intellect and intense ambition whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the presidency, Clingman was a lawyer, entrepreneur, Civil War general, inventor, amateur scientist, explorer, and, as a U.S. congressman and senator, one of the foremost champions of southern rights. Thomas E. Jeffrey's explanation of how a leading advocate of this cause could thrive within an environment where slavery was only a marginal institution provides fresh insights into the political culture of southern Appalachia, the character of the southern rights movement, and the coming of the Civil War.