Reconstruction [1865-1877]

viii, 183 pp. "Reconstruction touched the very nerve of nineteenth-century America; the issues it raised still trouble us today. This volume recaptures the hopes and fears of the American people as the recalcitrant Southern states rejoined a hostile North, as millions of newly-freed slaves threatened to disturb the balance of American society. In personal accounts, a crippled Negro preacher tells of his beating at the hands of a the Ku Klux Klan; an Alabama farmer expresses the white Southerner's contempt for "Samo"; J. D. B. De Bow speaks grudgingly of the New Order in the South. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Henry Clay Warmoth, and other vocal politicians restage the clash between those for whom the Emancipation Proclamation was the vindication of an ideal and those unreconciled to the abolitionist triumph. The words of their successors reveal the waning of Radical idealism and the silent victory of Southern segregationist. These first-hand statements recreate one of our history's most virulent controversies; their message deepens our understanding of the issues of state rights and human rights as we face them today."