"In this masterful work, Caroline E. Janney begins with a deceptively simple question: how did the Army of Northern Virginia disband? Janney slows down the pace of the events after Appomattox to reveal it less as a decisive end and more as the commencement of a chaotic interregnum marked by profound military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney blends analysis of large-scale political,...

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures...

"This concise history delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on American social fabric. [The author] depicts Reconstruction as a "bourgeois revolution"--As the attempted extension of the free-labor ideology embodied by Lincoln and the Republican Party to what was perceived as a Southern region gone awry from the Founders'...