ABSTRACT
In Reconstruction, Eric Foner uses rare, firsthand accounts of the era to show that African American slaves and freedmen (newly freed slaves) were central to the abolition of slavery and the successes of the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, the North reintegrated the 11 Southern states that had seceded from the United States and restructured their political, legal, and economic systems. The Dunning School, a key part of the intellectual establishment that justified and sustained racism and segregation, was the dominant interpretation of the Reconstruction era until the end of World War II. Although Foner originally majored in physics at Columbia University, he changed to history after taking a year-long course with the historian James Shenton on the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Another important academic influence was Foner’s PhD supervisor, Richard Hofstadter, who he describes as “the premier historian of his generation.”
