Books by Michael W. Fitzgerald

Scholars of reconstruction have generally described Republican Party factional conflicts in racial terms, as if the racial agenda evoked unified black support. This study aims to show that that depiction oversimplifies a contentious and often overlooked intaracial dynamic.

Led by a coalition of blacks and whites with funding from congressional radicals, the Union League was a secret society who aimed to bring freedmen into the political arena after the Civil War. This work explores the influence of the League in Alabama and Mississippi.