Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Brown Thrasher Books) [Paperback]

Willie Lee Rose (Author), C. Vann Woodward (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0820320617 | ISBN-13: 978-0820320618 | Publication Date: March 1, 1999

Just seven months into the Civil War, a Union fleet sailed into South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound, landed a ground force, and then made its way upriver to Beaufort. Planters and farmers fled before their attackers, allowing virtually all their major possessions, including ten thousand slaves, to fall into Union hands.

Rehearsal for Reconstruction, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Charles S. Sydnor Prize, is historian Willie Lee Rose’s chronicle of change in this Sea Island region from its capture in 1861 through Reconstruction. With epic sweep, Rose demonstrates how Port Royal constituted a stage upon which a dress rehearsal for the South’s postwar era was acted out.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A marvelous book."--New Yorker

"A definitive work."--New York Times Book Review

"A disturbing, beautifully told story."--New York Review of Books

"A triumph of historical analysis [and] a detailed recreation of some of the Civil War's noblest hopes and greatest tragedies."--David Brion Davis

"First-rate history."--Journal of American History

About the Author

Willie Lee Rose is the author of Rehearsal for Reconstruction, A Documentary History of Slavery in North America (both Georgia), and Slavery and Freedom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820320617
• ISBN-13: 978-0820320618
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Historial Information Worth Knowing, March 22, 2005

By 

B.W. Rosancrans "Brach" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

Standing from an academic point of view Rehearsal for Reconstruction (RfR) is undoubtedly useful for information pretaining to Reconstruction. RfR illustrates the problems that were set forth during reconstruction, but limits and expands them to a setting of the Port Royal Experiment (PRE). Themes that arise in the book are those of Southern social changes in labor (move from slavery to free labor), economics (decline therein), and politics (freedmen's move into the political atmosphere). It illustrates how northern attitudes change during the shadowy and turbulent era and also how Nothern Freedmen associations and/or missonaries came to the south to help with the project. Also, Rose will show how the racial attitudes, race relations, and social class structure were affected by the Civil War and Reconstruction. And finally, RfR will develop your knowledge on land distriburtion and land disputes among the planters and the freedmen.
Rose takes you through stories that depict just how life was in the Port Royal experiment. Although you do not need to have a degree in history or need to have a previous understanding of the topic at hand, Rose will show how things were in a revissionist style.
I would highly recomend this book on two accounts; 1.) if you are interested in the topic of Reconstruction or even the American Civil War for that part, this would be a good book to read for pleasure. 2.) This book is very useful for academic research. Although you will be directed to the topic of the PRE, you will still be capible of extracting meaningful and useful information that will assist you in your studies.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Reference Book, March 28, 2003

By 

Stephanie Dray "Author of Lily of the Nile" (Baltimore, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Milestones!: 200 Years of American Law : Milestones in Our Legal History (Hardcover)

I won this book in a contest in my youth for a mock trial competition. I never realized that it would be so useful to me as a reference all throughout my college years, into law school and beyond.

It's a beautiful book, and it inspires you with the majesty of what used to be our law and the landmark cases that used to be made in less timid times.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A preview of reconstruction, September 18, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

Willie Lee Rose describes what took place in the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the Civil War. When Union troops took over the Islands in 1861 the plantation owners fled. They left behind their negroe slaves.

Administration of the area was divided between the military, various missionary associations and cotton agents. The negroes continued with their agricultural duties, but no longer as slaves.

Under the new system, cotton productivity declined. One major factor was because the negroes preferred to grow food crops rather than cotton. They could not eat cotton.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, some of the old planters returned, but in many instances their land had been forfeit.

From a non-academic layman's viewpoint, even though there is worthwhile information to be learned from this book, it was very hard for me to finish it. The basic ideas could have been presented in a much shorter monograph.