Bibliographische Detailangaben

Beteilige Person:	Ballantyne, David T. (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Buch
Sprache:	Englisch
Veröffentlicht:	Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press [2025]
Schriftenreihe:	Conflicting worlds : new dimensions of the American Civil War
Schlagwörter:	Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) / Louisiana Louisiana / Race relations / Political aspects / 19th century Louisiana / Politics and government / 19th century African Americans / Louisiana / Politics and government / 19th century Rapides Parish (La.) / Race relations / Political aspects / 19th century African Americans / Louisiana / Rapides Parish / Politics and government / 19th century Rapides Parish (La.) / Politics and government / 19th century Louisiane / Relations raciales / Aspect politique / 19e siècle Louisiane / Politique et gouvernement / 19e siècle
Abstract:	"David Ballantyne's Fractured Freedoms is a microhistory of central Louisiana from the 1860s to the 1890s, focusing on majority-Black Rapides Parish during Reconstruction. The region offers a valuable case study for examining the relationship between white wartime Unionism and postwar Republicanism; how battles over politics, economics, and African American freedoms developed in different settings; the durability of the Reconstruction project in the Deep South; and the transition from Reconstruction to Jim Crow. Rapides Parish was one of countless rural locales where white residents contested Reconstruction in the South. Rapides and other majority-Black parishes along the Red and Mississippi Rivers provided the voting majority vital for Republican state-level control in Louisiana. Located in the fertile Red River Valley region, Rapides stood on the edge of the cotton South and at the threshold of a remarkably violent section of an already violent state. Rapides, though, was not as bloody as surrounding parishes, while its persistent military occupation (1865 to 1869 and 1873 to 1877) and the presence of substantial sugar cultivation alongside cotton agriculture made sustained Black gains more feasible than in parishes to the north and northwest. Nevertheless, central Louisiana also witnessed perhaps the era's deadliest race massacre at Colfax in April 1873. Ballantyne's study reveals what is, in part, a rural Reconstruction success story. His research stresses the resilience of African American politics and the persistence of significant divisions among white residents, particularly along class lines. It also emphasizes the limitations of what was possible during and after Reconstruction. Fractured Freedoms also unpacks Lost Cause-influenced claims about white Louisianans' allegiances during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Although regularly asserted, white political unity needed to be manufactured in central Louisiana rather than assumed. Moreover, examples of white political pragmatism puncture myths of overwhelming white Confederate commitment or unified opposition to Reconstruction, as demonstrated by widespread Union loyalty oath swearing during the 1864 Red River campaign and the local Democratic press's routine denunciations of "croakers," "sunshine patriots," and other white dissenters during Reconstruction and afterward. Despite widespread white paramilitarism, Black political mobilization remained robust in Rapides, and it was only with the collapse of state-level Republican power in 1877 that local Democratic forces were able to dismantle local Republican political control and gradually constrict African American freedoms. Reconstruction failed in a way that narrowed prospects for later Black activism.
Beschreibung:	2502
Umfang:	324 Seiten
ISBN:	9780807183038 0807183032