Arkansas In War And Reconstruction 1861 1874

Studies the reconstruction in Arkansas from 1862-1874 when changes in the military situation had taken place and the president was more confident of his ground as far as Arkansas was concerned.

When Arkansas seceded from the Union in 1861, it was a thriving state. But the Civil War and Reconstruction left it reeling, impoverished, and so deeply divided that it never regained the level of prosperity it had previously enjoyed. Although most of the major battles of the war occurred elsewhere, Arkansas was critical to the Confederate war effort in the vast Trans-Mississippi region, and Arkansas soldiers served—some for the Union and more for the Confederacy—in every major theater of the war. And the war within the state was devastating. Union troops occupied various areas, citizens suffered greatly from the war's economic disruption, and guerilla conflict and factional tensions left a bitter legacy. Reconstruction was in many ways a continuation of the war as the prewar elite fought to regain economic and political power. In this, the fourth volume in the Histories of Arkansas series, Thomas DeBlack not only describes the major players and events in this dramatic and painful story, but also explores the experiences of ordinary people. Although the historical evidence is complex—and much of the secondary literature is extraordinarily partisan—DeBlack offers a balanced, vivid overview of the state's most tumultuous period.

Reconstruction has been called one of the most tumultuous and controversial periods of Arkansas's history, an era in which African Americans sought to secure the benefits of their hard-won freedom, the former leaders of the state pursued restoration of their pre-war economic and political status, and the U.S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau sought to maintain a balance between these competing interests. By the time Reconstruction ended in 1874, Arkansas had been wracked by brutal political violence, black legislators had experienced their first opportunities for service, and the Republican Party was embroiled in the tragicomedy of the Brooks-Baxter War, setting the stage for the rise of the Democratic "Redeemers." While thousands of books have been written about the American Civil War, the tense period that followed the war has received relatively little attention. In light of this, the Old State House Museum in Little Rock brought a distinguished group of experts together for a day-long seminar in 2017 to discuss Reconstruction in Arkansas and its aftermath. Speakers discussed the greater issue of Reconstruction across the South, the political situation in Arkansas during the period, the activities of African American legislators in the state, political and military violence during Reconstruction, the long-lasting effects of the 1874 state constitution, and the bizarre affair in which two men with claims to the governor's office fought over control of the state capitol. In this collection of essays written by the event's speakers, Carl H. Moneyhon provides an overview of Reconstruction in the United States, Jay Barth explores post-Civil War politics, Blake Wintory discusses the African Americans who served in the Arkansas General Assembly, Damon Cluck delves into the Arkansas militias that provided the firepower for Reconstruction violence, Kenneth Barnes gives insights into the political violence that convulsed the state, Thomas DeBlack unravels the Brooks-Baxter War, and Rodney Harris visits the 1874 Constitution and its effects on Arkansas's future. The writings collected in this volume offer valuable insights into Reconstruction in Arkansas and how its effects still resonate today.

This groundbreaking study, first published in 1994, draws on a rich variety of primary sources to describe Arkansas society before, during, and after the Civil War. While the Civil War devastated the state, this book shows how those who were powerful before the war reclaimed their dominance during Reconstruction. Most importantly, the white elite's postwar commitment to a cotton economy led them to set up a sharecropping system very much like slavery, in which workers had little control over their own labor. In arguing for both change and continuity, Moneyhon reconciles contemporary accounts of the war's effects while addressing ongoing debates within the historical literature.

Excerpt from Reconstruction in Arkansas, 1862-1874 An effort has been made in this study to give due con sideration to all the forces and in uences which appeared during these troubled years, but it has been necessary in the interest of proportion to subordinate the spectacular and the exceptional to the determining factors in the problem. On those aspects of reconstruction which were national in scope or common to the whole South, this study has been restricted to what affected the local situation in some appreciable measure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."