Description:
In Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina, Mark L. Bradley examines the complex relationship between U.S. Army soldiers and North Carolina civilians after the Civil War. Postwar violence and political instability led the federal government to deploy elements of the U.S. Army in the Tar Heel State, but their twelve-year occupation was marked by uneven success: it proved more adept at conciliating white ex-Confederates than at protecting the civil and political rights of black Carolinians. Bluecoats and Tar Heels is the first book to focus on the army's role as post-bellum conciliator, providing readers the opportunity to discover a rich but neglected chapter in Reconstruction history.
Brief description: Mark L. Bradley, staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C., is the author of This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize in 2001.
Review Quotes:
With this examination of the interactions between civilians and the Union military forces in post-Civil War North Carolina, Bradley has written a useful work that fills many historiographical voids. His book serves as a corrective to outdated early-twentieth century works on Reconstruction in North Carolina.
-- "Journal of Southern History"