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The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough (review)

The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough (review) fertilizers. Indeed, in the face of the system’s exploitation and volatility, many freedpeople made their way into other extractive industries like tim- ber, turpentine, and mining, and into the cities. The costs of this new eco- nomic regime to the region’s democracy and justice—or lack thereof—are well known, but Mauldin shows just how deeply those costs were rooted in environmental decline. Changes in the land in combination with racial and class discrimination were the ultimate origin of rural poverty in the postbellum South. While it may not overturn the larger narrative of Reconstruction, Unredeemed Land succeeds in making the case that any economic or polit- ical understanding of the era must account for the ecological conditions that undergird it. It also pairs nicely with Joan Cashin’s recent War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War (2018), a book similarly focused on the lived material and eco- logical experiences of the war. But Mauldin, unlike Cashin, gives freedmen a prominent place in the narrative, and Unredeemed Land emerges as the stronger work because of it. In the process, Mauldin also gives us a model for the future of big Civil War environmental history, and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of the Civil War Era University of North Carolina Press

The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough (review)

Behrend, Justin
The Journal of the Civil War Era , Volume 10 (1) – Mar 2, 2020
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright @ The University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
2159-9807

Abstract

fertilizers. Indeed, in the face of the system’s exploitation and volatility, many freedpeople made their way into other extractive industries like tim- ber, turpentine, and mining, and into the cities. The costs of this new eco- nomic regime to the region’s democracy and justice—or lack thereof—are well known, but Mauldin shows just how deeply those costs were rooted in environmental decline. Changes in the land in combination with racial and class discrimination were the ultimate origin of rural poverty in the postbellum South. While it may not overturn the larger narrative of Reconstruction, Unredeemed Land succeeds in making the case that any economic or polit- ical understanding of the era must account for the ecological conditions that undergird it. It also pairs nicely with Joan Cashin’s recent War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War (2018), a book similarly focused on the lived material and eco- logical experiences of the war. But Mauldin, unlike Cashin, gives freedmen a prominent place in the narrative, and Unredeemed Land emerges as the stronger work because of it. In the process, Mauldin also gives us a model for the future of big Civil War environmental history, and

Journal

The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Mar 2, 2020

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