This entry in the Perspectives in Social History series examines the course and consequences of Reconstruction on the former Confederate states by focusing on the everyday people who lived through it. Reconstruction: People and Perspectives is a fascinating collection of essays and documents that illuminates the experiences of ordinary Americans across all levels of society in the southern United States during Reconstruction. Reconstruction: People and Perspectives describes in vivid detail the experiences of a diverse group of people caught up in the Civil War's aftermath in the South. Chapters focus on Civil War veterans, former slaveholders, farmers and city residents, Northerners in the South, and African American men and women (both those who stayed in the South and those who migrated). It also reports on groups similar studies often overlook, such as Native Americans and white women. Looking at Reconstruction from a social historian's point of view, this revealing work adds a much needed new voice to studies of the era. Primary documents provide first-hand insight into the lives and times of diverse individuals during one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history Includes a bibliography of key works on the Reconstruction era as well as a reference chapter of terms, people, and events, including "carpetbaggers," "Gideon's band," and "the Colfax massacre"

* Argument incorporates a wide range of sources * Interdisciplinary in approach * Synthesizes existing scholarship whilst bringing a fresh perspective

* Argument incorporates a wide range of sources * Interdisciplinary in approach * Synthesizes existing scholarship whilst bringing a fresh perspective

Through an examination of various couples who were forced to live in slavery, Rebecca J. Fraser argues that slaves found ways to conduct successful courting relationships. In its focus on the processes of courtship among the enslaved, this study offers further insight into the meanings that structured intimate lives. Establishing their courtships, often across plantations, the enslaved men and women of antebellum North Carolina worked within and around the slave system to create and maintain meaningful personal relationships that were both of and apart from the world of the plantation. They claimed the right to participate in the social events of courtship and, in the process, challenged and disrupted the southern social order in discreet and covert acts of defiance. Informed by feminist conceptions of gender, sexuality, power, and resistance, the study argues that the courting relationship afforded the enslaved a significant social space through which they could cultivate alternative identities to those which were imposed upon them in the context of their daily working lives. Rebecca J. Fraser is lecturer in American studies at the University of East Anglia. Her essays have appeared in Journal of Southern History and Slavery and Abolition.