Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Economic role of race===
Economists and economic historians have different interpretations of the economic impact of race on the postwar Southern economy. In 1995, Robert Whaples took a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]], who studied American history in all time periods. He asked whether they wholly or partly accepted, or rejected, 40 propositions in the scholarly literature about American economic history. The greatest difference between economics PhDs and history PhDs came in questions on competition and race. For example, the proposition originally put forward by [[Robert Higgs]], "in the post-bellum South economic competition among Whites played an important part in protecting blacks from racial coercion", was accepted in whole or part by 66% of the economists, but by only 22% of the historians. Whaples says this highlights: "A recurring difference dividing historians and economists. The economists have more faith in the power of the competitive market. For example, they see the competitive market as protecting disenfranchised blacks and are less likely to accept the idea that there was exploitation by merchant monopolists."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Whaples |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Whaples |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=139–154 |jstor=2123771 |title=Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions |date=March 1995 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700040602|s2cid=145691938 }}</ref>