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The Trial of Democracy

Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910

Xi Wang author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Georgia Press

Published:15th Jan '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Trial of Democracy cover

After the Civil War, Republicans teamed with activist African Americans to protect black voting rights through innovative constitutional reforms—a radical transformation of southern and national political structures. The Trial of Democracy is a comprehensive analysis of both the forces and mechanisms that led to the implementation of black suffrage and the ultimate failure to maintain a stable northern constituency to support enforcement on a permanent basis.

The reforms stirred fierce debates over the political and constitutional value of black suffrage, the legitimacy of racial equality, and the proper sharing of power between the state and federal governments. Unlike most studies of Reconstruction, this book follows these issues into the early twentieth century to examine the impact of the constitutional principles and the rise of Jim Crow. Tying constitutional history to party politics, The Trial of Democracy is a vital contribution to both fields.

The Trial of Democracy covers this time period like no other work and provides a better context for discussion of Republican efforts to enfranchise African Americans.

* author of A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 *

Extensively researched and well written. Wang utilizes published and unpublished government documents as well as diaries, letters, and personal papers to synthesize the debate between Republican liberals, conservatives, and moderates and their opponents over the suffrage and enforcement issues.


Carefully researched and clearly written . . . Wang’s evidence has broad implications and might well force historians to rethink standard narratives of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

* Journal of Southern History *

Wang's account . . . extends beyond the local and immediate origins of [Reconstruction’s] failure and in so doing provides a fuller account of the national-level forces and long-term costs.

* Virginia Quarterly Revi

ISBN: 9780820340845

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 30mm

Weight: 590g

480 pages