“Kolchin has written a fresh and valuable study of black history. He is persuasive in suggesting that as far as blacks were concerned, ‘the new social order took shape and virtually all of the significant new developments of Reconstruction occurred in the immediate postwar years.’ [By] concentrating as much as possible on the black community itself rather than on the actions and attitudes of whites, he finds the principal development to have been [their] insistence ‘on behaving as they understood free men to behave.’ Convincing, well-buttressed arguments.”--The Journal of American History