Description
"While the Reconstruction Era in America saw a paradigmatic realignment of the country's core institutions and values, there was a literally physical quality to reconstruction as well: the country was not only rebuilding the South after the Civil War but flat-out building as it expanded westward. John Dean Davis details not only what this literal construction entailed but who was doing it-in particular, the Army Corps of Engineers and the workers it employed. The Corps' projects not only transformed the landscape; they created markets, fostered a distinctive expansionist culture, and-for a time-enacted a less discriminatory economic and social agenda across the South and West"-- Provided by publisher.