Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

This is perhaps the only book that describes how suddenly-emancipated negroes responded to their new freedom before they were forced back into non-slave servitude under Jim Crow.