First published 2001
Most historians point to Southern racism as the reason Reconstruction collapsed. Heather Cox Richardson takes a different path. She argues that economic class played a crucial role alongside race in ending the federal effort to rebuild the South. Richardson shows how Northern enthusiasm for helping freed slaves declined as economic criticism grew louder and demands for wealth redistribution spread. She tracks this shift through newspapers, speeches, pamphlets, Congressional records, and private letters from 1861 to 1901. The evidence reveals Northern attitudes changing from early Republican praise for black laborers to later suspicion and hostility. Richardson examines voting rights, taxation, western expansion, violence, and civil rights to map this transformation. She uncovers Northern resentment against working-class activism and the rise of a middle class that valued individual achievement above collective action. This new middle class saw African-Americans as competitors threatening their economic success. Richardson's research reveals how class concerns shaped racial attitudes and ultimately doomed Reconstruction's promise of equality.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, non-fiction, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, social-commentary
Setting: North, South
Period: 1861-1901
336 pages · Hardcover · Harvard University Press