One of the findings from the Library's strategic plan survey responses was that customers wanted staff to offer more book recommendations. Though I admit that most likely those customers wanted book recommendations about the latest fiction and their read-alikes, I am going to interpret that finding to include requests for more recommendations about local history nonfiction, particularly when we have some good titles to suggest to you as supplemental reading related to the BDC's local history program presentations.
National Park Service Historian Ranger Eric Ellis gave a great talk about the political divisions of the Beaufort Republican party last week. As he noted, the Republican Party was in control during most of the Reconstruction Period until it split into various factions. In 1874 Democrats changed their election tactics, disrupting Republican political rallies and cutting political deals with Republican splinter groups to secure local and state offices.
Here are a few recommended books from the BDC or SCLENDS consortium about the rough and tumble, oftentimes violent - but fascinating - political history of South Carolina's Reconstruction Era and its impact on and at the national level :
Black Over White : Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction by Thomas Holt. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1977.
The Southern Historical Association awarded this book its 1978 Charles S. Syndor Prize as recognition of Holt's scholarship combining quantitative analysis with narrative history to challenge myths about the power and political effectiveness of Reconstruction-era Black politicians in the Palmetto State.
The Bloody South Carolina Election of 1876 : Wade Hampton III, the Red Shirt Campaign for Governor and the End of Reconstruction by Jerry L. West. Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2011.
Contentious political campaigns are nothing new. This book examines the gubernatorial election of 1876, in which the state's most celebrated Civil War general created a united front in the Democratic Party and wrested control of politics from the Republicans. Of particular note are the ways in which the race, with its disqualified ballots, delays and wrangling, prefigured some elections in the 2000s. For four months, the state endured two warring Houses of Representatives. Two Black Beaufort County men, Thomas Hamilton and N.B. Myers crossed the aisle to join the Wallace House in support of Hampton to secure his governorship.
Gullah Statesman : Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839 - 1915 by Edward A. Miller, Jr. Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 1995. Available in print and as an e-book on Hoopla.
A native of Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was born into slavery but through acts of remarkable courage and determination became the first African American hero of the Civil War and one of the most influential African American politicians in South Carolina history. I consider this one of the most important secondary works about Smalls. It is a political biography of his triumphs and setbacks of the celebrated U.S. congressman and advocate of compulsory, desegregated public education.
The author was a newspaper man who argued that the "carpetbagger" government that ruled South Carolina from 1868 until it was overthrown in 1876 was corrupt and caused more destruction than the four years of the Civil War. More recent scholarship has challenged Williams' views. Hathitrust provides a digital copy online.
Hurrah for Hampton! : Black Red Shirts in South Carolina during Reconstruction by Edmund L. Drago. Fayetteville : University of Arkansas Press, 1998.
Drago takes a more balanced view of the Reconstruction Era to examine the motives and concerns of the former enslaved who supported a movement that eventually led to the return of white supremacy in the Palmetto State. Though most of the freedmen identified and supported the Republican party, Drago focused on the primary source testimonies before Congress of seven Black conservatives who joined the white paramilitary clubs termed the "Red Shirts" who supported the election of former Confederate general Wade Hampton in the governor's race in 1876. He also includes analysis of eleven slave narratives to explore the relationship between Black initiative and southern paternalism.
Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861 - 1893 by Stephen R. Wise and Lawrence S. Rowland. Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 2015.
I consider the three volumes series on the history of Beaufort County by Lawrence S. Rowland and others as "The Bible of Local History." Volume 2 explores how the Union victory and the political and social Reconstruction of South Carolina was followed by a counterrevolution called Redemption, the organized campaign of Southern whites, defeated in the war, to regain supremacy over African Americans. While former slave-owning, anti-black "Redeemers" took control of mainland Beaufort County, they were thwarted on the Sea Islands, where African Americans retained power and kept reaction at bay. By 1893, elements of both the New and Old South coexisted uneasily side by side as the Democratic mainland reverted to an agricultural-based economy while the Republican Sea Islands and the town of Beaufort underwent an economic boom based on the phosphate mining industry and the new commercial port in the Lowcountry town of Port Royal.
Requiem for Reconstruction : Black Countermemory and the Legacy of The Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation by Robert D. Bland. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2026.
Bland "explores how Black Americans born in the thirty years between 1840 and 1870 saw Reconstruction as a defining political movement and worked to preserve its legacy by formulating new archives, shaping local community counternarratives, and using the Black press to preserve and circulate Reconstruction's meaning to a national audience."
South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras : Essays from the Proceeding of the South Carolina Historical Association edited by Michael Brem Bonner and Fritz P. Hamer. Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 2016.
This is an anthology of twenty-three of the most enduring and important scholarly articles about the Civil War and Reconstruction era published in the peer-reviewed journal since 1931. The volume is divided by topic into five subsections: "The Politics of Secession and Civil War"; "On the Battlefront"; "On the Home Front."; "Emancipation, Race, and Society"; and "The Politics of Reconstruction."
State of Rebellion : Reconstruction in South Carolina by Richard Zuczek. Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 2009. Also available as an e-book on Hoopla.
The author recounts the volatile course of Reconstruction in the state that experienced the longest, largest, and most dynamic federal presence in the years immediately following the Civil War in this book. He details the tactics - from judicial and political fraud to economic coercion, terrorism, and guerrilla activity - employed by conservatives to nullify the African American vote, control African American labor, and oust northern Republicans from the state. He documents the federal government's attempt to quash the conservative challenge but shows that, by 1876, white opposition was so unified, widespread, and well-armed that it passed beyond government control.
To Rescue the Republic : Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union and the Crisis of 1876 by Bret Baier. New York : Custom House, 2021.
Fox News Channel's Chief Political Anchor provides a history of Grant's essential yet underappreciated role in preserving the United States during a period of great political division. The book is available in print, large print, and audio CD through SCLENDS as well as on Hoopla as an audio book and as an e-book.
If you happen to be more of a watcher than a reader, then I suggest that you take a look at "The Rise and Fall of Reconstruction in South Carolina" with Dr. Brent Morris, a COVID-era recording we made when all was shut down five years ago. The information Dr. Morris provides is very helpful to understanding what happened in the Palmetto State between approximately 1865 and 1880. If you want to skip the introduction and get straight to his lecture, begin around the 5-minute mark.
Reminder: All units of the Beaufort County Library will be closed Monday, May 25 in honor of Memorial Day.
