The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas

Download or read book The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas written by Carl H. Moneyhon and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking study, first published in 1994, draws on a rich variety of primary sources to describe Arkansas society before, during, and after the Civil War. While the Civil War devastated the state, this book shows how those who were powerful before the war reclaimed their dominance during Reconstruction. Most importantly, the white elite's postwar commitment to a cotton economy led them to set up a sharecropping system very much like slavery, in which workers had little control over their own labor. In arguing for both change and continuity, Moneyhon reconciles contemporary accounts of the war's effects while addressing ongoing debates within the historical literature.