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The University of Alabama was burned to the ground in the final days of the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, survivors constructed a new collection of buildings using many of the bricks left from the original campus. Nevertheless, the university's presidency changed frequently, Alabama had a new egalitarian constitution created by a racially diverse coalition of Republicans, the fate of the University of Alabama soon became a key battleground in the contested nature of state. In
The Battle for the University of Alabama, historian William Warren Rogers, Jr. traces this incredible yet little-known story of the bitter contest for the fate of a cultural citadel in relation to the histories of other public universities in the former states of the Confederacy as they struggled to make their own way after the war.
About the author
William Warren Rogers Jr. is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Georgia. He is author of
Reconstruction Politics in a Deep South State: Alabama, 1865-1874;
A Scalawag in Georgia: Richard Whiteley and the Politics of Reconstruction;
Confederate Home Front: Montgomery during the Civil War; and
Black Belt Scalawag: Charles Hays and the Southern Republicans in the Era of Reconstruction.
