Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction To The Naacp; Author: Mcpherson, James M.; Paperback

Author: Mcpherson, James M.
Edition #2; Princeton Paperbacks; Paperback
454 pages
Published: May 1995
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton
ISBN: 069110039X

Building on arguments presented in The Struggle for Equality, James McPherson shows that many abolitionists did not retreat from Reconstruction, as historical accounts frequently lead us to believe, but instead vigorously continued the battle for black rights long after the Civil War. Tracing the activities of nearly 300 abolitionists and their descendants, he reveals that some played a crucial role in the establishment of schools and colleges for southern blacks, while others formed the vanguard of liberals who founded the NAACP in 1910. The author's examination of the complexand unhappy fate of Reconstruction clarifies the uneasy partnership of northern and southern white liberals after 1870, the tensions between black activists and white neo-abolitionists, the evolutionBuilding on arguments presented in the author's The Struggle for Equality, this study describes how many American Abolitionists did not retreat during the Reconstruction period after the US Civil War, but vigorously continued their battle to free the slaves.