Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 To Civil War: What Slavery Did 3
Resistance, unity, and diversity in the enslaved population
White Southerners and the pro-slavery consensus: the plantation elite and the nonslaveholding majority. Whigs, Democrats, and the struggle over secession
The crisis of up-country society and the emergence of Unionist disaffection
Slavery under the strain of war
2 National Politics: Andrew Johnson and the Lost Compromise 22
The Northern majority moves toward emancipation
Presidential Reconstruction from Lincoln to Johnson, Black Codes, and Conservative rule
Johnson vs. the Republican Congress: the Northern electorate decides
Black suffrage and Military Reconstruction
3 Emancipation and Terror in the Plantation South 47
Rebuilding the slave-style plantation-gang labor and tight control
Politicization of the freedpeople and the transition to decentralized tenant farming
Sharecropping and the emergence of Klan-style terrorism
4 Establishing the Reconstruction Governments 72
Congressional Reconstruction, goals, and mechanics
Institutionalizing change at the constitutional conventions
The interracial Republican coalition
Conservative backlash
Grant's election and the confirmation of the Reconstruction order
5 Railroads, Development, and Reconstructing Society 96
The search for native white support
Whiggish moderates and economic development: railroads as Southern panacea
Issuing bonds and financial complications
The corruption issue, civil rights, and the national context
6 Race, Faction, and Grant 119
The Grant administration and moderate whites
Radical reaction and black empowerment
Thestruggle for leadership and federal patronage, faction, and class in the black community
The Liberal Republican revolt, the Klan issue, and Grant's reelection
7 Gender, Race, and Civil Society in the Reconstruction South 143
Freedwomen, domestic work, and family life
Local government, society, and public education in the Reconstruction South
Taxes, debt, law enforcement, and the legal structure of equality
8 The Politics of Slaughter: Depression and Reaction 165
Consolidation of African-American political influence
The panic of 1873
Resurgence of racist violence: the White Leagues
Collapse of the Northern Republican majority and abandonment of civil rights protection
The Democratic sweep of 1874, North and South, and its consequences
9 Endgame in South Carolina: 1877 and After 194
Governor Chamberlain and the reform initiative
The limits of Republican retrenchment and bipartisan anti-corruption politics
Terrorism, Rutherford B. Hayes, and the end of Reconstruction
Toward Jim Crow and the civil rights movement to come
A Note on Sources 213
Index 219
