After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866

Reid, Whitelaw, 1837-1912Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
997K words
Chapters
100

Tags

English Originals World HistoryDocumentary Literature Human GeographyHistorical TestimonySocial ObservationRacial IssuesCivic AwarenessDocumentary NarrativeTurbulent EraSouthern JourneyPostwar ReconstructionAmerican South

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866 by Whitelaw ReidAuthor: Reid, Whitelaw, 1837-1912,Language: English, Class: F206: United States local history: The South. South Atlantic States, Release Date: Aug 18, 2017

Editor's review

This book is a travelogue of observation written by journalist Whitelaw Reid after his firsthand tour of the American South between May 1865 and May 1866. Set against the peculiar moment just after the Civil War, it uses a journalist's keen eye to record the South's rebuilding of order, its economic hardships, and the first shifts in race relations after defeat. Its value lies in the immediacy of firsthand testimony: the author visited towns and countryside, met people of different classes, and left later generations vivid material for understanding the social atmosphere of Reconstruction. As a news-report-style historical text, it is rich in detail and highly readable, yet inevitably carries the standpoint of a Northern observer and the limitations of its era. It suits as supplementary reading for research on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and for readers interested in nineteenth-century American social history to read in sections. Readers are advised to read it alongside later scholarship on Reconstruction in order to identify its tendentious passages.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Before reading, learn the basic timeline of the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era to situate the observations.
  2. Read chapter by chapter following the author's itinerary, taking notes to distinguish factual record from the author's commentary.
  3. Read alongside modern histories of Reconstruction to compare narratives from different standpoints.
  4. Pay attention to the book's descriptions of the Southern economy and race relations as a starting point for discussing the limits of the source.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

What does this book mainly record? As a journalist, the author toured the American South over the year after the war, recording what he saw in towns and countryside, social order, economic conditions, and the lives of different groups. It is a travelogue of observation with a strong sense of immediacy rather than a systematic historical study, and it serves as supplementary source material for research on Reconstruction.
Is the narrative in the book objective? As the observations of a Northern journalist, the book inevitably carries the standpoint and prejudices of the author and his era, and its descriptions of Southern society are not necessarily neutral. Readers should treat it as a historical text with a perspective and read it alongside other sources rather than as a fully objective record.
How is the electronic edition best used? This edition is a free public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg; the text is searchable and copyable, making it suitable for locating passages by topic, excerpting quotations, or using as course reading material. Since it lacks modern annotations, users should verify names, places, and historical background themselves.

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About the author

Reid, Whitelaw, 1837-1912 Author

Reid, Whitelaw (1837-1912) was a late nineteenth-century American journalist and writer whose biographical details are limited in publicly available sources; only two of his works are held here. After the War: A Southern Tour, May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866 draws on his travels through the South in the first year after the Civil War, recording social conditions, town and country life, and public sentiment on the eve of Reconstruction in a documentary style that combines journalistic observation with historical value. Problems of Expansion turns to American expansion and policy questions, showing how his writing extended from on-the-spot reporting to political commentary. One book offers a firsthand record of the postwar South, the other discusses expansion policy; both are clearly written and fact-focused, offering useful perspectives on American society and politics of the period.