In Crucible of Reconstruction, Ted Tunnell examines the byzantine complexities of Louisiana's restoration to the Union, from the capture of New Orleans to the downfall of the Radical Republicans a decade and a half later. He writes with insight about wartime Reconstruction and the period of presidential Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson, but his ultimate concern is with Radical Reconstruction and that uneasy coalition of Unionists, free blacks, and carpetbaggers that formed the Louisiana Republican party after Appomattox and struggled fitfully for a biracial society based on equality and justice.

Ted Tunnell, a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, is the editor of Carpetbagger from Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell and the author of Edge of the Sword: The Ordeal of Carpetbagger Marshall H. Twitchell in the Civil War and Reconstruction.

ISBN: 9780807118030

Paperback

257 pages

6 x 9

LSU Press, 1992