The Road to Redemption

Book excerpt: During Reconstruction, an attempt was made in the South to return its politics to the two-party system that it had experienced during the Jacksonian era. This book is a study of that experiment in party formation. As such, it attempts to explain how this system operated, what brought about its collapse, and what took its place. After all, Reconstruction was not embarked upon solely to round out and settle the sectional conflict. Far more important was its purpose of establishing a new political order, even a new economic direction, for the South, and that is what this book is about. -- from Introduction.