A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

Elsewhere, however, the plantation South seemed at first glance to offer a remarkable example of social and economic continuity. No “revolution in land-titles” swept the tobacco and cotton belts; the majority of planter families managed to retain control of their land. Yet despite their uncanny capacity for survival, war, emancipation, and Reconstruction fundamentally altered the planters’ world and their own role in it.