Reviews for Short History of Reconstruction,1863-77

The average rating for Short History of Reconstruction,1863-77 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-30 00:00:00 Karen Migel The first half is a dry and dense recital of the change in federal laws and early state constitutions that commenced Reconstruction. But the second half focuses on how racism, postwar economic events, and evolving concepts of the appropriate scope of government ended up reversing both the gains of Reconstruction in the South and the identity of the national Republican Party. It turned the party from the champion of abolition, free labor rights, and government as catalyst of development to the enforcer for Gilded Age magnates and advocate of small government. Just as bad, it abandoned black southerners to violence and poverty, and betrayed the Union dead by allowing antebellum leaders and policies to return. The information in the first half is important, just hard to get through. Foner outlines the variation in Southern attitudes and economic status by region and class, pointing out that many yeomen outside the plantation regions had opposed secession and been burdened with much of the Southern war expense due to unfair tax policy--they could possibly be enticed into a postwar coalition with blacks as the earliest efforts sought to replace planter hegemony. Commencing with the Emancipation Act in 1863, when in fact the Union Army occupied parts of the South and was figuring out how to install governing bodies, and then proceeding through Andrew Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction efforts, the first half focuses on how racism and the efforts to keep plantation labor under old-style control shaped the first years. However, there were enough Radical Republicans to be outraged at the weak changes in black rights and conditions. They derailed the Presidential initiative by almost impeaching Johnson and moving control over Reconstruction to Congress. Congress made it harder for antebellum and Confederate politicians to participate in government, and continued the meant-to-be-temporary Freedmans Bureau, which aided Southern blacks, particularly in setting up schools. During this period liberal new Southern state constitutions were enacted. Blacks entered into local, state and federal Southern political life, reunited families and created strong social organizations. The thing they didn’t succeed at was acquiring land. The federal government tried selling them seized property, but it later reversed the sales as power shifted and political alliances in the North decided that former plantation owners were needed in partnerships--give them their land back. Proposals to redistribute (seize and sell via long-term contracts) land to blacks to enable them to make a living and compensate them for former slave labor were debated. Those who argued this would keep the former slave from learning self-reliance won, abetted of course by those who saw a bad precedent. And white landowners agreed not to sell land to blacks. Blacks preferred to be small subsistence farmers, but wealthy whites in both North and South needed cotton, and they needed blacks to work it. What is interesting here, though, is how strongly these Republicans supported a strong federal government and activist policies and expenditures. This is a theme that was sourced in the Whig party (see What Hath God Wrought for an excellent history of antebellum attitudes toward the appropriate federal role and states rights, amidst wideranging coverage of technical, cultural, economic, and political US history from 1812-1845). And early in Reconstruction the Republicans allied with upland Southern yeoman, who wanted state funded schools and federal debt relief. But crop failures and the crushing tax burden brought on by Southern Reconstruction corruption soured the white yeoman enthusiasm for stronger central government and the taxes needed for services. Foner covers the rollback of state spending in Southern states that, along with the failure of hoped-for industrial development after the war, doomed the region to still-lingering economic backwaterdom. The second half does cover what Foner terms Reconstruction in the North, which some reviwers here object to. But this is essential to understanding why the Republicans abandoned Reconstruction in the South. In both parts of the country railroad construction led to massive corruption in government, but the difference was in the North and West the railroads actually got built and stimulated development. In the south, corruption started to support a Northern view of the Southern Reconstruction governments as inept as well as corrupt, based on both racial and class prejudices. In addition, immigration, the financial crisis of the 1870s, and growing labor unrest led to turmoil in both political parties. The Republicans, who had fought to ensure labor rights for the emancipated blacks in the South, suddenly discovered it to be ‘necessary’ to send in troops to quell strikers in Northern mines and steel mills. A new generation of Republicans espoused free markets and minimal government--suddenly the party was made up of middle and upper class merchants and bankers, appalled at the prospect of the voting power of Irish in the North, black in the South and Asians in the West. They stepped back and let local constraints on voting--violence, poll taxes, etc.--moot the 15th amendment. Bottom line: racism, the financial necessity of plantation cotton, weariness, and distance from the problem finally pulled the rug out from under Reconstruction. Foner outlines some permanent gains, but laments that it could have been so different. I think he does a very good job in a short book. I gained a deeper understanding of 1) what happened during Reconstruction and 2) how this crucial period shaped in the character of the Republican and Democratic parties that we still see today. Note: this is a condensation of his longer work on the topic, and lacks footnotes, although it has a long ‘suggested reading’ section. I am sure other scholars would alter his analysis in many places, and certainly would amend my short version, but unless you want to evaluate his conclusions by going to the source, this is good.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-17 00:00:00 Tyler Riso clear-cut, well-written, absolutely fucking appalling. here's the thing: my public school teachers politely glossed over that whole RECONSTRUCTION thing, subtitled "In Which White Politicians Decide To Continue The System Of Slavery, Albeit Informally". i suspect my teachers were not allowed to teach us about Reconstruction, in the same way they were not allowed to teach about the Holocaust, or the Vietnam War, or the US-run internment camps for Japanese citizens, or the various atrocities committed against the Native population, or ... anything that might cast the US in a less-than-shining light. we missed out on a lot of history in history class, is what i'm saying. so. for the past two hundred years or so, the South has deliberately worked to keep a nasty, racist culture in place. (the North has been deliberately complacent.) this is not okay. (understatement.) this is not a few individuals being jerks. this is a system of control. it is not acceptable. (understatement.) here is the story of the beginning, or rather one beginning, or rather the story of the choice to continue when there was a damn good opportunity to stop. the system had been dismantled and it was put back together again because people (white people. rich white people) decided there was more money to be made more fun in beating, raping, lynching, shooting, terrorizing, violence extraordinare and as ordinary as the sun rising -- than in complying with, you know, a standard moral code. this is not a handful of people. this is an entire country, most especially the persons in power, who decide that it's better for some to be enslaved and others raised above their deserts, than for everyone to be equal and free. this is wrong. (understatement.) (note: i was born and raised a Southerner. since you'll ask, my family came to America a few decades after formal slavery was abolished ... but i am white. i have always profited from a culture of white supremacy. owning human slaves is a symptom, not the sickness itself.)