A Union Officer in the Reconstruction

Beginning in 1866 John William De Forest served fifteen months as an agent of the Freedmens Bureau in Greenville South Carolina. After he left the army he wrote a series of magazine articles about the bureaus operation as it intersected with the daily lives of freedmen. In 1948 the articles were compiled in A Union Officer in the Reconstruction which offers a deft analysis of the structure of southern society after the war.