
The Union League Movement in the Deep South
Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction
Michael W. Fitzgerald(Author)
Louisiana State University Press
Published on 30. October 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-8071-2633-2 (ISBN)
Description
Led by a coalition of blacks and whites with funding from congressional radicals, the Union League was a secret society whose express purpose was to bring freedmen into the political arena after the Civil War. Angry and resentful of the lingering vestiges of the plantation system, freedmen responded to the League's appeals with alacrity, and hundreds of thousands joined local chapters, speaking and acting collectively to undermine the residual trappings of slavery in plantation society.
League actions nurtured instability in the work force, which eventually compelled white planters to relinquish direct control over blacks, encouraging the evolution from gang labor to decentralized tenancy in the southern agricultural system as well as the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. In this impressive work- the first full-scale study of the effect the Union League had on the politicization of black freedmen- Michael W. Fitzgerald explores the League's influence in Alabama and Mississippi and offers a fresh and original treatment of an important and heretofore largely misunderstood aspect of Reconstruction history.
League actions nurtured instability in the work force, which eventually compelled white planters to relinquish direct control over blacks, encouraging the evolution from gang labor to decentralized tenancy in the southern agricultural system as well as the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. In this impressive work- the first full-scale study of the effect the Union League had on the politicization of black freedmen- Michael W. Fitzgerald explores the League's influence in Alabama and Mississippi and offers a fresh and original treatment of an important and heretofore largely misunderstood aspect of Reconstruction history.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baton Rouge
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
441 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8071-2633-2 (9780807126332)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael W. Fitzgerald, professor of history at St. Olaf College, is the author of Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860- 1890.