The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 By Heather Cox Richardson
Publisher: Harvard University Press 2001 | 336 Pages | ISBN: 0674006372 | PDF | 1 MB
Publisher: Harvard University Press 2001 | 336 Pages | ISBN: 0674006372 | PDF | 1 MB
Richardson (history, MIT) continues the work she started in her first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth, which focused on how the Republican ideal of "free labor" shaped Union legislation during the Civil War. This ideal held that through hard work and persistence any man could advance in American society and that laissez-faire government was the best way to promote economic growth. Her new book focuses on the inadequacies and na vet of this agrarian ideal for a complex, war-torn nation with four million disenfranchised former slaves, a huge wartime federal government, and a bitter and demoralized Southern white population. Richardson argues that the Republican Party failed to change its ideology as the nation moved from essentially a rural nation of small farms to an industrialized, urban nation. She makes extensive use of contemporary newspaper articles, periodicals, speeches, and personal accounts to capture this tumultuous era in American history. Highly recommended for academic libraries.