When the war was over : the failure of self-reconstruction in the South, 1865-1867 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Carter, Dan T.
Imprint:Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c1985.
Description:xiv, 285 pages ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Series:ACLS Humanities E-Book.
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10514162
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:American Council of Learned Societies.
ISBN:0807111929
0807112046
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2002. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book]) Mode of access: Intranet. This volume is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Review by Choice Review

An important book for Reconstruction historians. Carter decides the stereotypical assessment of Reconstruction during 1865-66 by documenting the reaction of white Southerners, and finds the diversity of racial, economic, and political convictions manifested by Southerners during the antebellum years to be still much in evidence. The clash of these differences narrowed the options left to white Southerners in adjusting to their new situation. Disruption of the plantation system, violence (real and imaginary), repudiation of Southern war debts, racial fears attendant on the proslavery argument, and many other factors contributed to the constriction of political options for Southern whites. Lack of consensus in in complying with presidential directives gave way to a general discontent over the Negro suffrage issue, an increased political apathy, and a prevailing distrust of Northern Republican leadership in Washington. In suggesting flaws from within Southern society itself, Carter clarifies what went wrong with presidential Reconstruction. One weakness in the book lies in Carter's failure to come to grips with the possibility that the trauma of the war itself could have caused drastic shifts in attitudes. Carter too easily assumes that attitudes of the 1850s prevailed in the 1865-66 period. Nonetheless, this well-documented work is a must for all college and university libraries.-J.C. Wolkerstorfer, The College of St. Catherine

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Emory historian Carter, author of the classic Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1969), has painstakingly examined a subject on which there is near-unanimity--the failure of postwar Southern leadership in the brief period of mild Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67)--in order to make a slight but significant correction: the leaders were not die-hard Rebels (or plantation elite) but conservatives of varied background; a substantial number were ready to support industrial development and (""even more surprisingly"") development of efficient small-scale farming. But they were undone by ingrained Southern fear-and-dread of blacks, which manifested itself in terror of insurrection; by failure to anticipate Northern shock at the coercive Black Codes of 1865-66; and by Democrat Johnson's alienation of Republican congressional moderates in then vetoing civil rights legislation. (The outcome: Congressional or Black Reconstruction.) Carter develops this argument on several fronts. One is the nature of the leadership: Johnson's seven Southern gubernatorial appointees were neither secessionists (all had opposed secession until late 1860) nor Union loyalists (i.e., they were generally acceptable to the South); more crucially, the white Southerners elected to Congress in the fall of 1865--and denied seats--were not unreconstructed RebeLs every one (as charged by W.E.B. Du Bois and repeated by historians since) but a conservative mix (of whom ""only seven had been secessionists""). On another front, white Southern willingness ""to accept almost any form of government that would bring order to a disordered land"" was overborne by a tradition of extra-legal repression and Johnson's lack of clear, firm racial policies. Finally, economic self-reconstructionists faced many a dilemma: if, for instance, states repudiated their debts (as the federal government demanded), what would happen to private debts? if private debtors were allowed to postpone repayment (as impoverished citizens demanded), would this not delay recovery? In shading the usual grim picture, Carter confesses himself more depressed: the best that moderate, practical, conciliatory Southerners could do was not very much. As a revised interpretation, however, this has ramifications for any treatment of the Reconstruction period--even one as cut-and-dried as Burke Davis' The Long Surrender (below). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review


Review by Kirkus Book Review