Interpreting American History: Reconstruction
John David Smith | Filed under: African American Studies, Discover Black History, Interpreting American History, U.S. History, Understanding Civil War History![Smith cover](https://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Smith_Reconstruction-hr-134x210.jpg)
Writing in 1935 in his brilliant and brooding Black Reconstruction, W. E. B. Du Bois lamented America’s post–Civil War era as a missed opportunity to reconstruct the war-torn nation in deed as well as in word. “If the Reconstruction of the Southern states, from slavery to free labor, and from aristocracy to industrial democracy, had been conceived as a major national program of America, whose accomplishment at any price was well worth the effort,” wrote Du Bois, “we should be living today in a different world.”