Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings

This anthology, which brings together some of the most important research and writing on Reconstruction during the past three decades, represents what historians today generally accept as an accurate portrait of the period. Twenty-three articles and book excerpts by the leading scholars in the field are grouped under five headings: “Lincoln, Johnson, and Reconstruction,” “The Radical Republicans,” “The Freedmen,” “Radical Reconstruction in the South,” and “The Collapse of Reconstruction.” The emphasis here is on recent scholarship in which many of the older concepts about Reconstruction have been challenged and brought back into clearer perspective, but some work dating back to the thirties by such scholars as W. E. B. Du Bois and Horace Mann Bond is also included. Other contributors include C. Vann Woodward, Richard N. Current, Eric L. McKitrick, LaWanda and John H. Cox, Stanley Coben, Howard Jay Graham, James M. McPherson, Willie Lee Rose, Joel Williamson, David Donald, Thomas B. Alexander, Allen W. Trelease, Louis R. Harlan, Vernon L. Wharton, Jack B. Scroggs, and W. R. Brock.