Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: no extraordinary talent to recognize and locate. It is the unfamiliar region between that is difficult accurately to map out. The failure hitherto to present in a single view the striking features of these neglected parts is chiefly respons1ble for the fact that Reconstruction remains one of the most obscure parts of our history. A candid and comprehensive account of the political events of the time appears to divest the subject of much of the difficulty commonly supposed to attend its investigation. From a sufficient body of essential facts the step to an understanding and exposition of every principle of moment is comparatively easy. Though the general design of this volume will be suggested to the student of American history by an inspection of its principal subdivisions, it may not be unnecessary for the benefit of the general reader to add a brief outline of the plan that has been adopted. Chapter I. relates the most important political events in the history of Tennessee from its attempted secession to the restoration, in March, 1865, of a civil government loyal to the United States. Military movements in that Commonwealth have been noticed only so far as to render intelligible the successive steps by which that reorganization was accomplished. Chapters II. and III. bring the affairs of Louisiana and Arkansas, respectively, down to about the same time. Events in those States have been treated, so far as conditions permitted, in the same manner as in the case of Tennessee. Chapter IV. is concerned with the secession, restoration and dismemberment of Virginia. The formation out of a portion of that Commonwealth of the new State of WestVirginia, both because of the grave constitutional question which arose on a division of the parent State and the intrinsic interest ...