The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction

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:	9781469617589
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/27/2014
Series:	Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Mark Wahlgren Summers is professor of history at the University of Kentucky and is 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

“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