President Abraham Lincoln freed millions of slaves in the South in 1863, rescuing them, as history tells us, from a brutal and inhuman existence and making the promise of freedom and equal rights. This is a moment to celebrate and honor, to be sure, but what of the darker, more troubling side of this story? Slavery’s Ghost explores the dire, debilitating, sometimes crushing effects of slavery on race relations in American history. In three conceptually wide-ranging and provocative essays, the authors assess the meaning of freedom for enslaved and free Americans in the decades before and after the Civil War. They ask important and challenging questions: How did slaves and freedpeople respond to the promise and reality of emancipation? How committed were white southerners to the principle of racial subjugation? And in what ways can we best interpret the actions of enslaved and free Americans during slavery and Reconstruction? Collectively, these essays offer fresh approaches to questions of local political power, the determinants of individual choices, and the discourse that shaped and defined the history of black freedom. Written by three prominent historians of the period, Slavery’s Ghost forces readers to think critically about the way we study the past, the depth of racial prejudice, and how African Americans won and lost their freedom in nineteenth-century America.

This anthology of primary documents traces Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War, chronicling the way Americans—Northern, Southern, black, and white—responded to the changes unleashed by the surrender at Appomattox and the end of slavery. Showcasing an impressive collection of original documents, including government publications, newspaper articles, speeches, pamphlets, and personal letters, this book captures the voices of a broad range of Americans, including Civil War veterans, former slaveholders, Northerners living in the South, and African-American men and women who lived through one of the most trying, complex, and misunderstood periods of American history.

Reconstruction sought to bring order from the tremendous social, political, economic, physical, and constitutional changes wrought by secession and the Civil War, changes that included the abolition of slavery, the expansion of governmental power and constitutional jurisdiction, the rise of the Republican Party, the explosion of northern industry and the national market, and the appearance of a social dynamism that supported struggles by new social groups for political and civil equality. In American history, Reconstruction is the term applied to the period 1862-1877, when the United States sought to bring order from the tremendous social, political, economic, physical, and constitutional changes wrought by secession and the Civil War.The decision by eleven southern states to attempt secession and reject the national government, and the decision by the federal government under President Abraham Lincoln to deny that attempt and enforce federal law, unleashed forces that forever changed the American Republic. These changes included the abolition of slavery, the expansion of governmental power and constitutional jurisdiction, the rise of the Republican Party, the explosion of northern industry and the national market, and the appearance of a social dynamism that supported struggles by new social groups for political and civil equality. No one anticipated the totality, the viciousness, and the intensity of the civil war, and as a result no one was prepared to deal with its consequences. Topics covered include who should direct Reconstruction; how the federal government treated conquered states, their governments, and their soldiers; the role of the freed people in the new republic; and how the war altered the Constitution, the party system, and the American economy, among many others. Many entries describe and analyze the lives, careers, and impacts of the individuals, North and South, black and white, who shaped the course of Reconstruction, including the following: Ames, Adelbert Bruce, Blanche K. Douglass, Frederick Gordon, John B. Hancock, Winfield S. Howard, Oliver O. Pinchback, Pinckney B.S. Revels, Hiram R. Sheridan, Philip H. Wade, Benjamin F. Other entries deal with broad topics and themes related to Reconstruction and its consequences, including the following: Abolition of Slavery, Black Politicians, Black Suffrage, Bloody Shirt, Economic Policies, Race Riots, Reconstruction, Theories of Scandals During Reconstruction, State Constitutional Conventions, Violence During Reconstruction. Still other entries cover a wide variety of events, groups, acts, agencies, and amendments that were part of the story of Reconstruction, including the following: American Indians, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Compromise of 1877, Democratic Party, Fourteenth Amendment, Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Loyalty Oaths, Military Reconstruction Acts, Stalwarts, Tenure of Office Act. Among the more than 270 entries are 11 that discuss the course and consequences of Reconstruction in each of the former Confederate states, and 6 that discuss the outcome and significance of the presidential and key congressional elections held between 1864 and 1876. The encyclopedia also offers a timeline of Reconstruction, a bibliography of print and electronic information resources, a selection of primary documents, a table of important dates, numerous illustrations, and a detailed subject index.

Historian Wilbert Jenkins sheds light on how former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, in an attempt to adjust to freedom after the Civil War and gain control over their own lives, battled whites trying to regain control. Using autobiographies, slave narratives, Freedmen's Bureau letters and papers, and many other documents, Jenkins focuses on the freedmen's hopes and aspirations. 30 photos.

Originally published in 1988, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed marks a significant advance in the social history of the American Civil War--an approach exemplified and extended in Ash's later work and that of other leading Civil War scholars. For the new edition, Ash has written a preface that takes into account the advance of Civil War historiography since the book's original appearance. This preface cites subsequent studies focusing not only on race and class but also on women and gender relations, the significance of partisan politics in shaping the course of secession in Tennessee and other upper-South states, the economic forces at work, the influence of republican ideology, and the investigation of the degree to which slaves were active agents in their own emancipation.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

In Reconstruction in the Cane Fields, John C. Rodrigue examines emancipation and the difficult transition from slavery to free labor in one enclave of the South -- the cane sugar region of southern Louisiana. In contrast to the various forms of sharecropping and tenancy that replaced slavery in the cotton South, wage labor dominated the sugar industry. Rodrigue demonstrates that the special geographical and environmental requirements of sugar production in Louisiana shaped the new labor arrangements. Ultimately, he argues, the particular demands of Louisiana sugar production accorded freedmen formidable bargaining power in the contest with planters over free labor. Rodrigue addresses many issues pivotal to all post-emancipation societies: How would labor be reorganized following slavery's demise? Who would wield decision-making power on the plantation? How were former slaves to secure the fruits of their own labor? He finds that while freedmen's working and living conditions in the postbellum sugar industry resembled the prewar status quo, they did not reflect a continuation of the powerlessness of slavery. Instead, freedmen converted their skills and knowledge of sugar production, their awareness of how easily they could disrupt the sugar plantation routine, and their political empowerment during Radical Reconstruction into leverage that they used in disputes with planters over wages, hours, and labor conditions. Thus, sugar planters, far from being omnipotent overlords who dictated terms to workers, were forced to adjust to an emerging labor market as well as to black political power. The labor arrangements particular to postbellum sugar plantations not only propelled the freedmen's political mobilization during Radical Reconstruction, Rodrigue shows, but also helped to sustain black political power -- at least for a few years -- beyond Reconstruction's demise in 1877. By showing that freedmen, under the proper circumstances, were willing to consent to wage labor and to work routines that strongly resembled those of slavery, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields offers a profound interpretation of how former slaves defined freedom in slavery's immediate aftermath. It will prove essential reading for all students of southern, African American, agricultural, and labor history.

Much of the violence that characterized Reconstruction was directly associated with the Negro militia movement organized by Radical politicians to support their precarious regimes in Southern states. This book is the story of that ill-fated movement, a story with important implication for later times. Most Southern whites did not disguise their hostility toward the governments that were imposed on their states after Reconstruction entered its Radical phase. and Radical leaders lived in constant fear that this hostility would flare into open revolt. Organization of a loyal protective force was imperative if they were to remain in power. Although planned originally as a defensive force, the Negro militia was quickly used by the Radicals for such purposes as controlling elections. The resentment of Southern whites resulting from this political activity was aggravated by crimes of violence, depredations, and minor social offenses committed by some of the militiamen. However, the white Southerner’s fundamental enmity toward the Negro militia stemmed from the racial implications of a policy that armed the Negroes and placed them in positions of authority over white men. At first, opposition to the Negro militia movement took the form of legal stratagems and other measures short of force, but the final blow to the Negro militia was dealt by white volunteer rifle companies— illegal, armed counterforces that were at the very core of the White Line movement. The race riot as a political technique was born, the most notorious riot occurring at Hamburg, South Carolina, where, the author states, the policy of “disbandment through extermination” was successfully employed. Disintegration of the entire movement was inevitable. “It is ironic,” Singletary states, “that the organization of this protective force, because of its racial implications, actually aided in the destruction of the very thing it was created to protect.” Before its publication, Negro Militia and Reconstruction won the Moncado Prize, a cash award made biennially by the American Military Institute for “the best original book-length manuscript in any field of United States Military history.”