Introduction

This is a collection of recent scholarship on the aftermath of US slave emancipation, with a range of contributions from leading scholars in the field (Foner, Holt, Fitzgerald), up-and-coming historians with a reputation in the study of Reconstruction (O'Donovan, Baker, Kelly, Downs), and other promising junior and mid-level scholars (Illingworth, Mathisen, Bryant, Rhyne) whose essays here speak to some of the key issues in Reconstruction historiography. Aside from Holt's opening piece and the afterword by Foner, the essays were selected from more than 75 papers presented at two conferences organized by the After Slavery Project (www.afterslavery.com), a transatlantic research collaboration directed by Brian Kelly from Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. The selection was based on three main criteria: the essays had to concern the former Confederate states during the period following slave emancipation; they had to be based on original research; and in the judgment of the editors, the essays had to make a substantial contribution to Reconstruction historiography. We sought essays that concerned the role of labor in Reconstruction but did not confine ourselves to these. The result is a collection that covers a geographically diverse area of the former slave states, grappling with problems central to Reconstruction scholarship in the aftermath of Foner's important synthesis.