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CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA




  CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA


  BY WALTER L. FLEMING, PH.D.
  PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY


  [Illustration]


  New York
  THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, AGENTS
  LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
  1905

  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1905,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1905.

  Norwood Press
  J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




TO MY WIFE MARY BOYD FLEMING




PREFACE


This work was begun some five years ago as a study of Reconstruction in
Alabama. As the field opened it seemed to me that an account of
ante-bellum conditions, social, economic, and political, and of the effect
of the Civil War upon ante-bellum institutions would be indispensable to
any just and comprehensive treatment of the later period. Consequently I
have endeavored to describe briefly the society and the institutions that
went down during Civil War and Reconstruction. Internal conditions in
Alabama during the war period are discussed at length; they are important,
because they influenced seriously the course of Reconstruction. Throughout
the work I have sought to emphasize the social and economic problems in
the general situation, and accordingly in addition to a sketch of the
politics I have dwelt at some length upon the educational, religious, and
industrial aspects of the period. One point in particular has been
stressed throughout the whole work, viz. the fact of the segregation of
the races within the state--the blacks mainly in the central counties, and
the whites in the northern and the southern counties. This division of the
state into "white" counties and "black" counties has almost from the
beginning exercised the strongest influence upon the history of its
people. The problems of white and black in the Black Belt are not always
the problems of the whites and blacks of the white counties. It is hoped
that the maps inserted in the text will assist in making clear this point.
Perhaps it may be thought that undue space is devoted to the history of
the <DW64> during War and Reconstruction, but after all the <DW64>, whether
passive or active, was the central figure of the period.

Believing that the political problems of War and Reconstruction are of
less permanent importance than the forces which have shaped and are
shaping the social and industrial life of the people, I have confined the
discussion of politics to certain chapters chronologically arranged, while
for the remainder of the book the topical method of presentation has been
adopted