Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, published in 1905, is Walter L. Fleming's detailed history of one Southern state from the secession crisis of 1860 to the end of Reconstruction in 1874. He describes Alabama's politics before the war, the conscription, blockade and collapse of the war years, the condition of the freed people and the Freedmen's Bureau, the Reconstruction constitutions, the Reconstruction governments, the Ku Klux Klan, the Union League, the schools and churches, and the return of white Democratic rule. Fleming was a student of William A. Dunning and writes from his school's Southern white point of view, so his judgments on Reconstruction and on Black Alabamians have been sharply revised, but his book remains valued for the sources it collects. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.