The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction / Edition 1

by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Overview

For a generation, scholarship on the Reconstruction era has rightly focused on the struggles of the recently emancipated for a meaningful freedom and defined its success or failure largely in those terms. In The Ordeal of the Reunion, Mark Wahlgren Summers goes beyond this vitally important question, focusing on Reconstruction's need to form an enduring Union without sacrificing the framework of federalism and republican democracy. Assessing the era nationally, Summers emphasizes the variety of conservative strains that confined the scope of change, highlights the war's impact and its aftermath, and brings the West and foreign policy into an integrated narrative. In sum, this book offers a fresh explanation for Reconstruction's demise and a case for its essential successes as well as its great failures. Indeed, this book demonstrates the extent to which the victors' aims in 1865 were met—and at what cost.

Summers depicts not just a heroic, tragic moment with equal rights advanced and then betrayed but a time of achievement and consolidation, in which nationhood and emancipation were placed beyond repeal and the groundwork was laid for a stronger, if not better, America to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469617572
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/27/2014
Series:	Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Wahlgren Summers is professor of history at the University of Kentucky and author of A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Understanding Reconstruction as its contemporaries did, as a time to consolidate the nation but not to remake it, to guarantee its peaceful future and to secure its evolution, but not to revolutionize it, Mark Summers follows the Reconstruction story chronologically as well as thematically in a fast-paced narrative. The Ordeal of the Reunion exhibits the hand of a seasoned and thoughtful historian, thoroughly conversant with both the time period and its sources.—John David Smith, author of Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops

Mark Summers, one of the more prolific scholars of the Reconstruction era, has written on everything from ideas of paranoia to political corruption. The Ordeal of the Reunion is characterized by a depth of research that reflects a lifetime of labor and reflection. Summers's newest work is worthy of scholarly attention while being lively enough for a popular audience.—Michael Fitzgerald, St. Olaf College

Editorial Reviews

11/03/2014
The triumph of the Union Army and the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War are always complicated by the realities of Reconstruction, particularly the failure to protect freed African Americans and the eventual implementation of Jim Crow laws. University of Kentucky historian Summers (A Dangerous Stir) argues that although Reconstruction was a failure for former slaves, it was successful in propping up and reintroducing the federal system into the former Confederate states. His account is a reminder of how difficult this process was, noting how Southern constitutional delegates "did not welcome slavery's end," nor did they, like many others in the post-bellum South, "regret secession." Summers effectively captures the turmoil and frustrations of the era: the strange 1874 battle between candidates for Governor of Arkansas, the rise of white supremacist groups such as the "redeemers" and "White Leagues," and voter intimidation that successfully forced African Americans out of a meaningful role in government. He also shows how economic woes affected Reconstruction's prospects. An arrangement that preserved the Union but damned many to suffering, Summers demonstrates it best when discussing meetings of Union and Confederate veterans: "Reconciliation they welcomed—on their own terms." Illus. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Effectively captures the turmoil and frustrations of the era. . . . [and] shows how economic woes affected Reconstruction's prospects.—Publishers Weekly



Marvelously written.—CHOICE



A superb spinner of tales. . . . An important book, full of details and insights, and it deserves serious attention.—Journal of Southern History



Summers has devoted almost half a century to a study of the period, and it shows.—Blue & Gray Magazine



An overall framework for understanding the key problems of the period. . . . This is an important book, providing food for thought, if only because, tonally as well as substantively, it offers a counterpoint to the dominant narrative.—Journal of the Civil War Era



Summers's rich and careful new history of Reconstruction stands out in a crowded field....[His] mastery of the sources has allowed him to write an impressively thorough history of the period, and to pull together diverse strains with uncommon sophistication.—H-Net Reviews



A new narrative of the period featuring novel interpretations and sparkling insight.—North Carolina Historical Review



Skillfully written and a benefit to students, scholars, and those fascinated with the postwar years.—Southwestern Historical Quarterly



A valuable resource for scholars who teach in the field of Reconstruction.—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society



Readers interested in Reconstruction will find Summers' book to be a rollicking, deeply researched overview....[A] colorful guide to the politics of the era.—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

From the Publisher