Retreat from Reconstruction

According to William Gillette, recent reinterpretation of Reconstruction by revisionist historians has often tended to overemphasize idealistic motivations at the expense of assessing concrete achievements of the era. Thus, he maintains, the failure of both the purpose and the promise of Reconstruction has not been deeply enough analyzed.

Retreat from Reconstruction is the first and most comprehensive analysis yet published on the course of the development, decline, and disintegration of Reconstruction during the decade of the 1870s. Gillette sets forth the idea that these years provided the true test of the effectiveness of Reconstruction. By using the primary sources to back up and amplify his premise, he offers a detailed, thoroughly convincing study of Reconstruction and a significant interpretation of why the political programs of the Republicans ended in failure.