The pivotal era of Reconstruction has inspired an outstanding historical literature over the decades from W.E.B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction in America in 1935 through Eric Foner's Reconstruction in 1988. The resolution of long-running interpretive debates has shifted the issues at stake in Reconstruction scholarship, but the topic has remained a vital venue for original exploration of the regional and national history of the United States. In Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States, eight rising historians survey the latest generation of scholarly work and point to promising directions for future research, from cultural and gender history to Western history, legal history, and diplomatic history. Offering an expansive approach to the chronological definition of the postwar era, this volume is an essential read on this crucial period in American history.

Thomas J. Brown is Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina.

• Introduction


• 1: Stephen A. West, Catholic University: "A General Remodeling of Every Thing": Economy and Race in the Post-Emancipation South


• 2: John C. Rodrigue, Stonehill College: Black Agency After Slavery


• 3: Heather Cox Richardson, Amherst: North and West of Reconstruction: Studies in Political Economy


• 4: Michael W. Fitzgerald, St. Olaf College: Reconstruction Politics and the Politics of Reconstruction


• 5: Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina: The Past as a Foreign Country: Reconstruction, Inside and Out


• 6: Michael Vorenberg, Brown University: Reconstruction as a Constitutional Crisis


• 7: Leslie Butler, Dartmouth College: Reconstruction in Intellectual and Cultural Life


• 8: Thomas J. Brown, University of South Carolina: Civil War Remembrance as Reconstruction


• Index