ABSTRACT
The former resulted in the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the United States, and the latter resulted in the reintegration of the 11 Southern states that had seceded (withdrawn) from the Union and the restructuring of their political, legal, and economic systems. Eric Foner also details the ways in which Northern industrialists and investors attempted to extend their free labor ideology* in the South. His prior research had dealt with the causes of the Civil War, African American history (broadly speaking), the Anglo-American political writer Thomas Paine (1737-1809), and radicalism. Foner identifies 1978 as a turning point in his research on Reconstruction. Some of his British colleagues urged him to read literature about the abolition* of slavery in the British Empire. In the process, he discovered fresh angles to explore in aspects of slave emancipation that American historians had overlooked. In particular, Foner recalls becoming aware of the interplay between economics and racism.
