I did the Reconstruction Period thing about 10 or 12 years ago.
I found out that I could access newspapers from the 1850s to the present online, so I found 2 northern papers and 2 southern papers and read them going from the end of the war to about 1880. I figured that there would be a Yankee slant and a Confederate slant and that it would be up to me to read between the lines.
What I didn’t expect was that the north was far more intolerant of freed slaves going north than the south was of having them stay. What the northern labor unions did to migrating freedmen borders on being some of the worst atrocities in history.
Thanks for the pointers. I have the Great Tax Wars book already, so that's definitely one I'll be reading shortly, and the Rhodes 8 volume set looks fascinating, if I can get my hands on it.