As the North celebrated the end of the Civil War, the people of the South, particularly of recently fallen Richmond, mourned. The South was about to enter a period of extreme turmoil reconstruction. The Union, though preserved, would not easily be healed. Starting with Lincoln's assassination and continuing up through the harsh realities of occupation through the summer of 1866, authors Thomas and Debra Goodrich trace the history of reconstruction in the south-the death, destruction, crime, starvation, exile, and anarchy that pervaded those grim years.