Research Catalog

Title

The impact of the Civil War and reconstruction on Arkansas : persistence in the midst of ruin / Carl H. Moneyhon.

Author

Moneyhon, Carl H., 1944-

Publication

Baton Rogue : Louisiana State University Press, c1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana (Mississippi State University. Libraries) MsSM

Description

xiv, 288 p. : maps; 24 cm.

Summary

• Arkansas has traditionally been overlooked by historians of the South, but Carl H. Moneyhon brings the state to the fore in this study. Examining the social history of Arkansas and focusing on changes brought by the Civil War's devastation and political aftermath, Moneyhon presents a highly readable history of this turbulent time.
• Contributing to the historical debate over continuity and change in the Old South and New South, Moneyhon persuasively argues in favor of continuity. In the years after Reconstruction, the antebellum elite ruled a society that resisted modernization. As a result, the lives of most Arkansans in 1900 were not greatly different from what they had been half a century before - the state was overwhelmingly rural and beset by poverty, racism, poor education, and economic backwardness.
• The most profound effects of war, Moneyhon explains, were on white yeoman farmers and the lower classes, both black and white. The large landowners, with their political connections, felt the war much less than the working class. Their survival led to the most important aspect of post-Civil War society in Arkansas: the elite maintained or soon regained their positions of power, thus preserving the status quo.
• Divided into three parts, this work first treats Arkansas in the decade before the war, with comprehensive chapters on the economy, white society, slavery, and the political system. The second part deals with the war years, with one chapter focusing on the areas that remained under Confederate control and another on areas in which military operations occurred; two other chapters describe the emancipation of the slaves and efforts during the war to institute a Unionist government.
• The third section is a masterly examination of the politics of Reconstruction and Redemption in Arkansas, the state's postwar economy, and the experience of the former slaves.
• Prodigiously researched and gracefully written, The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas is a significant study that fills a historiographical gap by telling the story of war's destruction in terms of its impact on people's everyday lives. It will be welcome reading to those interested in the South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Subject

• Since 1861
• Reconstruction > Arkansas
• Arkansas > History > Civil War, 1861-1865

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-280) and index.

Contents

pt. I. Antebellum Arkansas. 1. Economic Life. 2. Arkansas Society. 3. Slavery and Slaves. 4. Political Power -- pt. II. The Civil War Years. 5. Confederate Arkansas. 6. Armed Conflict and Social Change: Arkansas and the Impact of Military Operations. 7. The Union Army and the Freedmen: Building Black Society. 8. Reconstruction of Loyal Civil Government: Lincoln, the Army, and Arkansas Loyalists -- pt. III. Postwar Arkansas. 9. Arkansan Society at the War's End. 10. Reconstruction of Political Power: Arkansas Politics, 1865-1868. 11. Restrictions on Black Freedom, 1865-1867: From Slavery to Tenantry. 12. Emergence of the Postwar Economy: The Triumph of Cotton and Its Impact. 13. Radical Reconstruction and Redemption, 1867-1874 -- Conclusion: Cotton, Landlords, and Democrats.

ISBN

0807118400 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^93026080^

OCLC

28505006

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library