Reconstruction-era New Orleans

After the Civil War, New Orleans remained a major port while its political and social order was transformed by emancipation and federal occupation. Freedpeople and free people of colour sought political rights and economic security, while former Confederates attempted to recover influence within the city.

Creole families, merchants, veterans and migrants rebuilt private lives amid racial violence, unstable finance and repeated epidemics. Yellow fever remained a constant danger and could destroy households with little warning.

This context supports fiction about postwar New Orleans, Confederate veterans, Creole society, marriage, family survival and epidemic disease. A Separate Country reimagines the later life of John Bell Hood and his family in the city.