By the late 20th century, historians were generally describing Coulter's body of work as "historical apologies justifying Southern secession, defending the Confederate cause, and condemning Reconstruction."
E. Merton Coulter wrote in 1947, "The Negroes were fearfully unprepared to occupy positions of rulership," and black officeholding was "the most spectacular and exotic development in government in the history of white civilization...(and the) longest to be remembered, shuddered at, and execrated.
"[1]Foner also wrote that as late as 1968, Coulter was "the last wholly antagonistic scholar of the era, describing Georgia's most prominent Reconstruction black officials as swindlers and 'scamps' and suggesting that whatever positive qualities they possessed were inherited from white ancestors.
[5] Coulter earned his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina (UNC), mentored by J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, a prominent historian who emphasized how Southern whites had suffered under Reconstruction and the lack of readiness of freedmen and blacks for suffrage.
[5] Coulter published books, often on forgotten and obscure people in Georgia history whose careers represented much about the state's development, such as his biographies of George Walton Williams, James Monroe Smith, Daniel Lee, Thomas Spalding, and many others.
According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, "Coulter emerged as a leader of that generation of white southern historians who viewed the South's past with pride and defended its racist policies and practices.