Winner of the North Caroliniana Book Award.
Blue Coats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina is an important and enduring contribution to the study of Reconstruction.
~Gordon McKinney, Professor of History at Berea College and author of Zeb Vance: North Carolina's Civil War Governor & Gilded Age Political Leader
Bradley is an extraordinary researcher and a very good writer, both of which come through in a book that brings attention to the reactionary and often unintended consequences of military and political moderation during Reconstruction.
~Peter S. Carmichael, Eberly Professor of Civil War Studies, West Virginia University, author of The Last Generation: Young Virginias in Peace, War, and Reunion
Mark Bradley's balanced, incisive study has broad implications for future research in the other southern states. Bluecoats and Tar Heels is one of the most important books on Reconstruction to appear in years.
~John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
A meticulously-documented history of civil-military relations in Reconstruction-era North Carolina.
~Raleigh News & Observer
The subject is well covered by Bradley...covers in detail the usual suspects, the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered and intimidated freedmen during the postwar period.
~Civil War News
Bradley makes an important contribution to the historiography of both North Carolina and the Reconstruction era...No book has looked so closely at the role of the U.S. Army in the post-Civil War South.
~Journal of American History
The question of how to return the Southern states to their proper relationship to the Union caused divisions in the country almost as deep and bitter as those caused by the war. Bradley's book is the result of careful study of original, primary, and secondary sources pertinent to that process in North Carolina.
~Choice
Books on military-civil relations often contain ponderous writing with excessive information about policy formation. Bradley avoids this pitfall, and his detailed narrative is well crafted and should appeal to both general and scholarly readers.
~Journal of America's Military Past
Bradley's book is vigorously researched, finely written, and carefully argued. Bluecoats and Tar Heels is an important contribution to military history, Reconstruction history, and the history of a still largely unknown era in the Old North State.
~Robert Weldon Whalen, Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians
Bluecoats and Tar Heels is a wellspring of useful information and a valuable contribution to Reconstruction studies.
~Rodney Steward, H-Net Reviews
With this examination of the interactions between civilians and the Union military forces in post-Civil War North Carolina, Bradley has written a useful work that fills many historiographical voids. His book serves as a corrective to outdated early-twentieth century works on Reconstruction in North Carolina.
~Journal of Southern History
Bradley's study examines military efforts to stabilize the region in the face of the opposition from both ordinary citizens and terrorist organizations such as the Regulators and the Ku Klux Klan.
~Lone Star Book Review
Historians have always recognized the importance of the army during Reconstruction, but they relegate it to the sidelines far too often. Mark L. Bradley puts it front and center. Drawing on an impressive research base... Bradley has produced a compelling and well-written study of the army's role in reconstructing one former Confederate state.
~The Historian
A scrupulously researched, deftly organized monograph.
~HistoryNet