A Union officer in the Reconstruction

John William De Forest

Beginning in 1866, John William De Forest served fifteen months as an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in Greenville, South Carolina. After he left the army, he wrote a series of magazine articles about the bureau's 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. - Publisher.