In the Wake of Slavery: Civil War, Civil Rights, and the Reconstruction of Southern Law - Hardcover

Ranney, Joseph A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275989720 ISBN 13: 9780275989729

Publisher: Praeger, 2006

Synopsis

The Civil War devastated the South, and the end of slavery turned Southern society upside down. How did the South regain social, economic, and political stability in the wake of emancipation and wartime destruction, and how did the South come together with its former enemies in the North? Why did the South not slip back into chaos? This book holds the keys to the answers to these tantalizing questions.

Author Joseph Ranney explodes the myth of a unified South and exposes just how complex and fragile the postwar recovery was. The end of slavery and the emergence of a radically new social order raised a host of thorny legal issues: What place should newly freed slaves have in Southern society? What was the proper balance between states' rights and a newly powerful federal government? How could postwar economic distress be eased without destroying property rights? Should new civil rights be extended to women as well as blacks? Southern states addressed these issues in surprisingly different ways.
Ranney also shatters the popular myth that a new legal system was imposed upon the South by the victorious North during Reconstruction. Southern states took an active hand in shaping postwar changes, and Southern courts often defended civil rights and national reunification against hostile Southern legislators. How did that come about? Ranney provides some surprising answers. He also profiles judges and other lawmakers who shaped Southern law during and after Reconstruction, including heretofore little-known black leaders in the South. These extraordinary individuals created a legal heritage that assisted leaders of the second civil rights revolution a century after Reconstruction ended. This book adds immeasurably to our knowledge not only of Southern history, but also of American legal and social history.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph A. Ranney is the Adrian P. Schoone Fellow in Wisconsin Law and Legal Institutions at Marquette University Law School, USA, and a partner with the firm DeWitt Ross & Stevens in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of several books, including Trusting Nothing to Providence: A History of Wisconsin's Legal System (1999), honored by the American Library Association as a notable book on state and local government, and In the Wake of Slavery: Civil War, Civil Rights, and the Reconstruction of Southern Law (2006).

Reviews

Ranney's careful and well-organized study of Reconstruction is an examination of Southern states' responses to the political, economic, and social changes following the Civil War. Since the federal government held limited power over the states, he argues, the states were able to rebuild their legal systems in a surprisingly varied evolution that tackled issues of race, property rights, and economic rehabilitation in an effort of reconciliation with a new American legal order. Ranney also profiles key political and legal figures who were at the forefront of their respective states' issues. Although significant laws were enacted during Reconstruction--notably the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Constitutional amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1866--the period also saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws. Ranney's thesis acknowledges that although Reconstruction forced white Southerners to acknowledge blacks as more than property and allowed blacks to take an active part in lawmaking, the lasting legacy of the legal framework would come to fruition nearly 100 years later during the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Elliot Mandel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0275989720
• ISBN 13: 9780275989729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 212