This classic report originally appeared as a series of articles in the Nation between July 8, 1865, and April 11, 1866. Dennett traveled in seven states—Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—at the very beginning of Reconstruction. His remarkably prophetic account of the recently defeated South is a major source for the history of this transition.

Caroline E. Janney is Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University and author of Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause.

“Dennett’s dispatches are examples of masterly journalism. They bring to life the people he met and talked with, and they re-create the temper of the times.”

—New York Times