Booknotes: South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras

New Arrival:
• South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras: Essays from the Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association edited by Michael Brem Bonner and Fritz Hamer (Univ of S Carolina Pr, 2016).

Beginning in 1931, hundreds of essays have been published by the journal Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association. Twenty-three have been selected for inclusion in this volume, representing a "treasure trove of scholarship on an impressive variety of subjects including race, politics, military events, and social issues." They are divided into five categories: “The Politics of Secession and Civil War”, “On the Battlefront”, “On the Home Front”, “Emancipation, Race, and Society”, and “The Politics of Reconstruction." Topical concentration has obviously changed over the decades, and the book's selections represent the kinds of things current academic scholars are interested in most, so the subsections are not weighed equally. For instance, while seven essays discuss Reconstruction politics, there are only two battlefront articles. It should also be mentioned that all of the Proceedings articles published since 2002 are freely available online at the SCHA website, so the book's selections end at 2001.