南北戦争終結後の合衆国が直面したのは、連邦を離脱し奴隷制擁護を憲法で公然と表明して北部と戦った南部11州をどのように合衆国に復帰させ、再建するかという問題でした。奴隷制度を全廃し、憲法修正第14・15条で黒人の市民権、投票権が承認され、連邦議会に黒人の議員が誕生するなどは前進でしたが、リーダーシップの欠如が新たな差別問題を生み、米国の社会機構に汚点を残すことになりました。連邦軍が南部を撤退する1877年までの「再建期（時代）」と呼ばれる米国史の一時代に注目し、明快な概説を提供します。
 

• Written by the leading authority on Civil War, Reconstruction, and Lincoln, and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize
• Provides a new perspective on Reconstruction, showing that it did not take place only in the South, but also in the West
• Discusses other "reconstructions" that occurred in parallel with the political one: in philosophy, literature, law, and economy

    
The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures cannot obscure a number of notable accomplishments, with decisive long-term consequences for American life: the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the election of the first African American representatives to the US Congress, and the avoidance of any renewed outbreak of civil war. Reconstruction suffered from poor leadership and uncertainty of direction, but it also laid the groundwork for renewed struggles for racial equality during the Civil Rights Movement.
             
This Very Short Introduction delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on American social fabric. Award-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo depicts Reconstruction as a "bourgeois revolution" -- as the attempted extension of the free-labor ideology embodied by Lincoln and the Republican Party to what was perceived as a Southern region gone astray from the Founders' intention in the pursuit of Romantic aristocracy.