South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras

South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras is an anthology of the most enduring and important scholarly articles about the Civil War and Reconstruction era published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association. Past officers of the South Carolina Historical Association (SCHA) Michael Brem Bonner and Fritz Hamer have selected twenty-three essays from the several hundred published since 1931 to create this treasure trove of scholarship on an impressive variety of subjects including race, politics, military events, and social issues.

The volume is divided by topic into five subsections. “The Politics of Secession and Civil War” stimulates thought on many of the era’s leading political figures and their respective policies, and “On the Battlefront” describes the effects of war on soldiers and civilians. Several historians investigate the people and institutions of southern society at war in “On the Home Front.” Dan T. Carter addresses the impact of emancipation on the South in the early stages of Reconstruction in “Emancipation, Race, and Society.” The essays in “The Politics of Reconstruction” investigate the contentious end of Reconstruction in South Carolina.

All articles published in the Proceedings after 2002 are available on the SCHA website, but this volume offers, for the first time, easy access to the journal’s best articles on the Civil War and Reconstruction up through 2001. Preeminent scholars such as Frank Vandiver, Dan T. Carter, and Orville Vernon Burton are among the contributors to this collection, which should reinvigorate interest in a new historical synthesis of the Palmetto State’s experience during that era.