NARRATOR: In the spring of 1865, hundreds of thousands of defeated Southerners returned home after four years of bitter fighting.

Although the Confederacy had come to stand for the principles of the plantation South, many in its ranks had only reluctantly fought to defend that way of life.

In fact, before the war, only one-third of Southern whites had owned slaves.

ERIC FONER, HISTORIAN: There's a kind of liberation going on for many poor whites, particularly in those areas that have not supported the Confederacy, who suddenly feel that they're liberated as well, from the rule of these "rebels" (as they called them). And they're holding their own meetings. And they're debating about forming alliances with blacks, and what kind of alliances should there be, and what kind of cooperation?

NARRATOR: Poor whites were not the only ones trying to find new ways for the South to move on.

Even some Confederate heroes, like the legendary John Singleton Mosby, known as The Grey Ghost, believed that Southern honor would not be tainted by accepting the results of the war.

READING, JOHN MOSBY: "I have never apologized for anything I did during or since the war. It was our country and we fought for it and we did not care whether it was right or wrong."

NARRATOR: In the early 1870s, Mosby became an outspoken opponent of the mythology of the Lost Cause, which claimed the South's moral and military superiority.

He challenged those who saw the South as the victim of Northern oppression.

READING, JOHN MOSBY: "You speak of the bitter hostility of the North toward the South. Well, four years of hard fighting is not calculated to make men love each other; neither is an everlasting rehearsal of the wrongs which each side imagines it has suffered going to bring us any nearer to a better understanding. Peace can only come with oblivion of the past."

NARRATOR: For some, however, the past could never be forgotten.

In northwest Louisiana, B.W. Marston, another Confederate veteran, was determined to defend his land against newcomers, like carpetbagger Marshall Twitchell.

JAMES MARSTON, DESCENDANT OF PLANTER: "I recollect telling [Mr. Twitchell] distinctly that if he proposed to rule these people with a rod of iron he could not do it; that these were American people, and they would never be made serfs of; that there was a very bitter feeling going on... I wanted him to understand that I would always go with the white people of our country right or wrong, because I would not place my judgment against them; that I was one of them and I would share their fate."

NARRATOR: As political and social tensions rose during Reconstruction, Southern whites felt increasing pressure to, as some put it, side with their race.

"White men unite" was a common rallying cry.

EDWARD AYERS, HISTORIAN: Something that people often don't understand is, before the Civil War, white Southern men had very often disagreed with each other. But the moment of secession, they subordinated those differences. And during the Civil War, they subordinated those differences as much as possible. And with Reconstruction, they have to subordinate them again. All that matters right then is that we are a defeated people, we are white men, we are under assault, we've got to stick together. So it's frustrating to a lot of white Southerners to say, "I don't agree with these things that are being done," but there's no vehicle by which you could disagree.

NARRATOR: Even as they struggled to define their role in this new world, poor white Southerners felt they had lost their skin privilege -- and now had to compete with African-Americans for jobs, social position, and political power.

WALKER: In this context, race did trump class. For the most part, poor whites did not reach out readily to their black peers. And the reason for that, there had grown up a culture in which any association with blackness was deemed to be socially unacceptable in Southern society; that to be associated with black people, and to be associated with them politically, was enough to have you declared a "race traitor" or a "nigger lover."

NARRATOR: Many Southern whites, wealthy and poor, were also angered by the new taxes introduced by the Reconstruction legislatures.

Before the Civil War, taxes had been levied mostly on slaves. But now that land was being taxed, planters had to pay more, and small landowners were faced with the prospect of paying taxes for the first time.

Like many of his neighbors, B.W. Marston was enraged.

MARSTON: "[The Republicans] elected all their officers and inaugurated them, and in my judgment inaugurated a reign of terror. They proposed tax sales; they pushed people for their taxes before they could raise money to pay for them."

NARRATOR: Others, like John Singleton Mosby, believed the Republican Party should be supported in its effort to rebuild the South.

In 1872, Mosby joined the party and campaigned for President Grant's re-election.

READING, MOSBY: "Like most Southern men, I had disapproved the reconstruction measures and was sore and very restive under military government; but since my prejudices have faded, I can now see that many things which we regarded as being prompted by hostile and vindictive motives were actually necessary, in order to prevent anarchy and to secure the freedom of the newly emancipated slave."

NARRATOR: Mosby was branded a turncoat for his ideas, and had to leave the South.

B.W. Marston took Marshall Twitchell's seat in the Louisiana Senate.

CLARENCE WALKER, HISTORIAN: Well, I tend to think the tide, in terms of white society, was running in the direction of what we would later call the "Solid South." And that even if you were not political, that you would have been pressured in some way or the other to be silent, or to turn your head the other way at what was going on.

NARRATOR: Today, the memory of Reconstruction is still very much alive in the white South.

MARSTON: White Southerners are very proud people. And we fought gallantly on battlefields from all across the South, from Texas to Virginia and into Pennsylvania. And we were defeated. And we accepted that defeat, humbly. But, still, there's a spark in the South, even today, that you see when you see the flags and you see the trucks, and you see Southern pride. The South is still a very proud people with almost a culture of its own. And this was a natural step following complete slavery, and these were the steps that we've gone through. We're still going through it today.