Germantown during the Civil War Era: A Reversal of Fortune

Germantown during the Civil War Era recounts the rise and fall of a nineteenth-century Tennessee town, a community that was not a typical antebellum town in the cotton belt. It’s a case study in how social, economic, and political changes affected them, Black and White.

Before the Civil War, Germantown had become a thriving cultural, commercial, and political center. Its elite and middle-class White families had full access to the cultural and social life of Memphis, as well as local private...