Profile:

Michael Perman teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels on American history in particular the American South, the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery and race relations, and citizenship and immigration policy.

He has published three books based on archival research. Two of them covered politics in the Reconstruction South. Reunion Without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 1865-1868 (Cambridge University Press, 1973) explained the former Confederates' response to the federal government's terms for their readmission to the Union, while The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879 (University of North Carolina Press, 1984) investigated the political system established in the South under Reconstruction, showing how it operated and how it was later overthrown. The third, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), examined the movement undertaken by the southern Democrats around 1900 to disfranchise almost all black voters and a large number of whites and thereby create the "Solid South."

A brief overview of post-Civil War America called Emancipation and Reconstruction , a volume in the American History Series, appeared in a second edition (Harlan Davidson, 2003). And Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) was published just recently.

He has also published several anthologies and readers in American history: Perspectives on the American Past: Readings and Commentary in two volumes (two editions: 1989, 1995); The Coming of the American Civil War (third edition, 1993), and Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction (two editions: 1991, 1998, 2011).