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Chronicling the rise and fall of North Carolina's fusion movement, this book illuminates an intricate interplay between politics, economic agendas, and racism. It examines how wealthy agriculturalists, industrialists, lawyers, merchants, and railroad leaders manipulated the state's political, economic, and social structures to assert dominance and maintain white supremacy, undermining the power gained by African Americans during Reconstruction. By the mid-1890s, however, Black and white Republicans and supporters of the smaller Peoples' Party formed a coalition known as fusion, upending two decades of the Democratic Party's white elite political domination in North Carolina. After four years, the Democratic Party mobilized under the menacing banner of white supremacy and, led by conservative, pro-business white people, restored the party's control over the state government.

Craig Thurtell contends that an examination of this period reveals that race was not the sole factor in the Democratic Party's quest for control. Instead, elite white men sought to establish a new social order influenced by class divisions, and Short of a Revolution provides a comprehensive analysis of these dynamics, revealing the multifaceted motivations behind the political shifts of late nineteenth-century North Carolina.