Description: From the late nineteenth century until World War I, a group of Columbia University students gathered under the mentorship of the renowned historian William Archibald Dunning (1857-1922). Known as the Dunning School, these students wrote the first generation of state studies on the Reconstruction-volumes that generally sympathized with white southerners, interpreted radical Reconstruction as a mean-spirited usurpation of federal power, and cast the Republican Party as a coalition of carpetbaggers
Brief description: John David Smith is the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has written or edited thirty-one books, including An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918; Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and The American Negro; Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops; Soldiering For Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops in the Civil War;and We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice: Black Voices from Reconstruction.
Review Quotes:
[. . .] The Dunning School is an interesting work on an important topic and contributes positively to a better understanding of these early twentieth century artifacts.
-- "Alabama Review"