1865 Alabama
376 pages, 6 x 9
21 B&W figures
Paperback
Release Date:16 Sep 2024
ISBN:9780817361938
Hardcover
Release Date:12 Sep 2017
ISBN:9780817319533
1865 Alabama
From Civil War to Uncivil Peace
University of Alabama Press
The epic final year of the Civil War in Alabama and its effects on Alabama politics today
To understand Alabama today, it's necessary to understand what happened in 1865. In 1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace Christopher McIlwain examines the end of the Civil War and the early days of Reconstruction, tracing how the action—and inaction—of leaders in the state during those twelve months shaped the decades that followed as well as state politics today. McIlwain focuses on four factors: the immediate and unconditional emancipation of enslaved people, the destruction of Alabama’s industrial economy, significant broadening of northern support for suffrage rights for freedmen, and a long scarcity of investment capital. Each element proves important to understanding aspects of Alabama today.
Relevant events outside Alabama are woven into the narrative, including McIlwain’s controversial argument regarding the effect of Lincoln’s assassination. Most historians assume that Lincoln favored black suffrage and that he would have led the fight to impose that on the South. But he made it clear to his cabinet members that granting suffrage rights was a matter to be decided by the southern states, not the federal government. Thus, according to McIlwain, if Lincoln had lived, black suffrage would not have been the issue it became in Alabama.
In his fresh analysis of what really happened in Alabama in 1865 and why—McIlwain illuminates that Alabama's challenges were neither entirely the fault of northern or southern policies but rather the complex interaction between the two.
To understand Alabama today, it's necessary to understand what happened in 1865. In 1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace Christopher McIlwain examines the end of the Civil War and the early days of Reconstruction, tracing how the action—and inaction—of leaders in the state during those twelve months shaped the decades that followed as well as state politics today. McIlwain focuses on four factors: the immediate and unconditional emancipation of enslaved people, the destruction of Alabama’s industrial economy, significant broadening of northern support for suffrage rights for freedmen, and a long scarcity of investment capital. Each element proves important to understanding aspects of Alabama today.
Relevant events outside Alabama are woven into the narrative, including McIlwain’s controversial argument regarding the effect of Lincoln’s assassination. Most historians assume that Lincoln favored black suffrage and that he would have led the fight to impose that on the South. But he made it clear to his cabinet members that granting suffrage rights was a matter to be decided by the southern states, not the federal government. Thus, according to McIlwain, if Lincoln had lived, black suffrage would not have been the issue it became in Alabama.
In his fresh analysis of what really happened in Alabama in 1865 and why—McIlwain illuminates that Alabama's challenges were neither entirely the fault of northern or southern policies but rather the complex interaction between the two.
‘1865 Alabama unequivocally demands to be taken seriously as a landmark in Alabama’s historical scholarship . . . Anyone wanting to know about Alabama’s Civil War and Reconstruction experience must reckon with this book.’ —The Alabama Review
‘Clearly, the first months of ‘peace’ in Alabama, McIlwain concludes, set the tone for the state's economic, political, and social evolution even to the present day. Judging from the convincing arguments herein presented, this lawyer has won his case.’ —Civil War Times
‘One of the most interesting and provocative studies of a Confederate state that has appeared in recent years. McIlwain presents an impressive amount of fresh research and information that advances a number of striking and controversial interpretations.’ —George C. Rable, author of God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War
‘McIlwain has produced an engaging, often witty, and always informative study of the development of Reconstructionist thought in Alabama. This is a topic that has only recently garnered serious attention, and so McIlwain stands as one of its pioneers.’ —Ben H. Severance, author of Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War and Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867–1869
Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr. is an attorney in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who has spent the last twenty-five years researching nineteenth-century Alabama, focusing particularly on law, politics, and the Civil War. He is the author of Civil War Alabama.
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