The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866

by Debra Goodrich, Thomas Goodrich

As the North celebrated the end of the Civil War, the people of the South, particularly of recently fallen Richmond, mourned. The South was about to enter a period of extreme turmoil reconstruction. The Union, though preserved, would not easily be healed.
Starting with Lincoln's assassination and continuing up through the harsh realities of occupation through the summer of 1866, authors Thomas and Debra Goodrich trace the history of reconstruction in the south-the death, destruction, crime, starvation, exile, and anarchy that pervaded those grim years.

Genres: Civil War, History, American Civil War

312 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Chris Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as a Christmas Gift I was looking forward to reading it. However once I started reading it I could not put it down and at some points it even made me mad at the way the Southern population ( not the soldiers that fought but the civilans that were just trying to survive) were being treated. And it just got worse after the assassination of President Lincoln. I would recommend this book to all that love History or the Civil War in general.

[JW · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent use of original sources (diaries, letters, newspapers) to present an anecdotal picture of the defeated Confederacy in the immediate postwar period. The narrative flow is novelistic. The authors concentrate upon the experiences of White Southerners, but they do not neglect the fate of the Freedmen. Still, the book is sympathetic to the ex-Confederates, and so goes against the “Neo-Abolitionist” interpretation. Especially revealing is the portrayal of the strength of Southern nationalism and the hopes it engendered, even to the bitter end.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage

Best thing about this book is the bibliography. A very one-sided, white supremacist view.
If you buy it read the epilogue first.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage.

[Lucía Delgado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book might give the Northern reader a better understanding of why so many people in the South resented and scorned the North well into the twentieth century. I was intrigued at the number of people in the South who rightly recognized that Lincoln's death boded ill for them; that, as one of them put it, the South had lost its best friend when Lincoln was assassinated. With Lincoln gone, the politicians who wanted revenge had no one in power to hold them back.

I would have liked more recognition of the fact that the blacks suffered from the economic sanctions and the like right along with the whites. In punishing the rebels, the Northern politicians were also punishing those who had had no political voice, and the freedman's bureaus and other organizations meant to help former slaves survive and thrive did not have nearly the resources to ameliorate that. This book also ignores or downplays the work done by Kim Murphy and others indicating that the Civil War was not the "low-rape" war it was reputed to be -- while black women bore the brunt of it, plenty of white women were raped during the war, and these rapes were often part of family lore. But on the other hand this book had plenty of information I did not know, and helped me to understand why Southern resentment simmered so long.

It'd be nice to find a book that discusses how that Southern resentment was eventually cooled. As the Balkans and other places demonstrate, time does not heal all wounds, and people can hold to grudges for generations. Happily, the people in the American South were wise enough to eventually realize that they were doing themselves more harm than the North had ever done, and they got over their resentments to the point that some Southern states now rival those in the North in terms of prosperity. Even before the Civil War there were southerners pointing out that slavery and the attendant attitudes were holding the South back, financially speaking, and rejecting those attitudes must have been all the more difficult after the war, but they did it. I'm thinking that would be an interesting process to follow.

[Jimmacc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a very informative book. Focused more on the day to day struggles rather than an discussion of overall policy. Specific issues were discussed as they related to collected letters/documents detailing how a person/family was impacted. The book has an overall negative view of non-soldier northerners, but most of the subject material was from southern families' letters, so not too surprising.

[Abhilash · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book touches on a lesser known aspect of Civil War History but after reading Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany by the same author, this seems to fall a bit short. One message rings loud and clear. All things considered, americans are decent warriors.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very biased against Northerners and would not recommend