In a series of state-by-state monographs, as well as large-scale histories, Dunning School historians argued that Reconstruction was badly handled after the Radical Republicans won the 1866 elections. They generally agreed with the policies of Abraham Lincoln and especially Andrew Johnson , and sharply condemned Ulysses Grant as corrupt. They saw the Carpetbagger s and Scalawag s as corrupt, and believed the Freedmen were unready for full participation in politics. Worst of all, they said, the exclusion of ex-Confederates was a terrible mistake.
In the 1940s a different approach was pioneered by Howard K. Beale and C. Vann Woodward . As disciples of Charles A. Beard they focused on greed and economic causation and downplayed the centrality of corruption. By 1960 a new school of progressive historians, riding the American Civil Rights Movement , rejected the Dunning interpretation. By and large the progressive historians praised the Radical Republicans and the Freedmen.
- Bowers, Claude ''The Tragic Era'' (1929), a best-selling book that has also been called propaganda. It argues that white southerners who had held power in the Old South lost power to blacks and their Northern allies, that federal courts in the South were established as military districts after the Civil War, and that black people were pawns of Reconstructionists, e.g. "Most of the negroes now enlisted in clubs, and drilled to believe their freedom depended on Republican or Radical Rule."
- Davis, W.W. ''The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida'' (1913).
- de R. Hamilton, J.G. ''Reconstruction in North Carolina'' (1914).
- Fleming, W.L. ''Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama'' (1905). Emma Lou Thornbrough, editor of '' "Black Reconstructionists in History'' 1972 writes that Fleming "was one of the most distinguished members of the Dunning school of historians. His volume is a good example of the way white historians of the early twentieth century looked at Black Reconstructionists." Fleming assumes "Negro inferiority and (it was) his conviction that blacks were gullible, ignorant dupes of unscrupulous whites." 128-129
- Garner, J.W. ''Reconstruction in Mississippi'' (1901).
- Ramsdell, C.W. ''Reconstruction in Texas'' (1910).
- Reynolds, J. S.. ''Reconstruction in South Carolina'', 1865-1877 (1905).
- Simkins, Francis Butler. ''South Carolina During Reconstruction'' (1932).
- Thompson, C.Mildred. ''Reconstruction in Georgia'' (1915).
- Blight, David. ''Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory'' (2000) a history of the Dunning group, the major school of thought taught in schools and colleges in the United States in 20th century. Blight, a progressive historian, describes the retreat from equality for African Americans that the Dunning School represents.
- Coulter, E. Merton. ''The South During Reconstruction, 1865-1877'' (1947).
- Dunning, William Archibald. ''Reconstruction: Political & Economic, 1865-1877'' (1905).
- [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla0088%2F&tif=00449.TIF&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmoa%2Fsgml%2Fmoa-idx%3Fnotisid%3DABK2934-0088-6&coll=moa&frames=1&view=50 "The Undoing of Reconstruction," by William A. Dunning (1901)]
- ''The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States'' by Walter Lynwood Fleming, (1918) full text of short overview.
- Fleming, Walter L. ed. ''Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial'' (1906).
- on Dunning
- Short biography of Dunning
- Muller, Philip R. "Look Back Without Anger: A Reappraisal of William A. Dunning". ''Journal of American History'' 1974 61(2): 325-338. Online at JSTOR at most colleges.
- Smith, John David. ''Slavery, Race and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends, and Methods, 1866-1953'' (1999)
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