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Reconstruction - The Second Civil War

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If there is a villain behind the curtain of the tragic story of Reconstruction, then that would have to be John Wilkes Booth. "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War" basically begins with Lincoln's assassination, but the harm that Booth unleashed on the South by removing the compassionate Lincoln from the political stage and empowering the Radical Republicans in Congress to appease their demands for Southern subjugation is a profound irony. Still, if there is a clear lesson from this "American Experience" documentary, it is that the South might have lost the Civil War but they managed to win Reconstruction.

This two-part PBS documentary covers the momentous years 1863 to 1877. Part I, "Revolution" produced and directed by Llewellyn M. Smith, begins with Lincoln's warning that Reconstruction would be "fraught with great difficulty," and ends in 1867 when Congress passed the Radical Republican's Reconstruction plan that divided the former Confederacy into five military districts, each commanded by a General with power to enforce law and administer justice. New southern governments would be created but were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and allow black men the right to vote, which saw former slaves running and be elected to public office. Part II, "Retreat," produced and directed by Elizabeth Deane shows how the Democrats slowly but surely took power back in the Southern states and achieved "redemption" for white Southerners. A compelling case is made for the acquiescence of Northerners with the concern of Southern whites for keeping the blacks subordinate, and one of the more interesting episodes concerns the White League, which went after carpetbaggers the way the Ku Klux Klan was going after freedmen (I am surprised I had never heard of the Coushatta massacre before this). When President Grant sends federal troops to take the Louisiana legislature back from a takeover by the White League, it is an intervention that apparently offends Northerners as much as it did Southerners (but an armed mob taking over a state legislature is apparently okay). By the time you get to the end of this documentary you are convinced that the Civil War was a tragedy, but Reconstruction was a farce.

While this documentary covers the history and politics of the period it also focuses on a series of key individuals to tell the story of Reconstruction, much as Ken Burns did in "The Civil War." Marshall Twitchell, a former Yankee officer from Vermont, became a successful "Carpetbagger" in Louisiana who had a violent neighbor in planter B. W. Marston (whose descendant tells his family's side of the story. Fan Butler tried to keep her family's Georgia plantations, which grew rice, afloat through sharecropping. John Roy Lynch was a freed slave who succeeded in politics because of Reconstruction, while Tunis Campbell tried to stop whites from controlling blacks in his county and measured his idealism with provocative efforts that made him a target for trying to give the Negro supremacy over the white man. You can make your own judgment as to how representative these choices are as focal characters, given that they represent both Southern and Northern as well as white and black Americans, but they do allow the history to be personalized as well as setting up the historians being interviewed to speak to the greater significance of their individual stories.

With regards to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, I would contend that it does not necessarily need to be turned into a question of Reconstruction. Johnson's crime was not that he wanted to fire a member of his cabinet, but rather than he tried to fire a Radical Republican when, you have to remember, he was neither. Abraham Lincoln was not re-elected to the presidency as a Republican, but rather as a member of the "Union" party, with Johnson, a Democrat who was the only U.S. Senator from the South not to resign following secession, as his running mate. The first part of this documentary does a good job of trashing Johnson as racist who even betrayed his allegiance to poor whites over the planters because of his disregard for the freed slaves. By the time Grant takes over the White House from Johnson there is simply too much momentum behind Reconstruction for any chief executive to do anything about it. Even when the Congress passes civil rights legislation it is not enforced as the Democrats regain control of the South and eventually the laws are declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It would take a century for those rights to be passed again and actually become the law of the land.

I watched this on PBS just recently. It explores the bloody aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The documentary accurately portrays the struggles of both north and south and gives a point of view from both sides also. By the way, this documentary is not rated R. Why would PBS make a rated R documentary? It was a great and entertaining show!

THIS IS A WONDERFUL, IN DEPTH DISCUSSION OF THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA IN THE UNITED STATES. IT IS A MUST SEE FILM FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT AS A HISTORIAN.

The two "featured" reviews paint this first-rate documentary as inadequate for the classroom because of omitted "warts." This is so much quibbling.

As a history teacher, I find myself perfectly capable of filling in the blanks in any film I present to my students, including this one. NO documentary covers EVERY fact or point in great detail, either because of time constraints, or to maintain focus on the main point rather than digress into minutiae that is off the subject. Speaking of such omissions, I find myself perfectly capable of discussing the Tenure of Office Act (which, with the Johnson impeachment, could be the subject of a film on its own) and the self-serving motives of some Radical Republicans of that era to give my students further context with which to understand this film, which I have done.

The idea of showing a film without comment or discussion in the classroom is abhorrent, and to insinuate that this film would be presented to students in such a manner is equally so. Additionally, viewers outside the classroom are most likely interested enough in the subject of Reconstruction to have done some reading beforehand, or some follow-up reading, since as I said above, no documentary film covers every point.

This film is an excellent tool to augment any high school unit on Reconstruction after the Civil War, and one would do well to ignore the prejudices of reviewers who are more interested in taking potshots at liberals than in an honest review.

The video is somewhat informative, but it didn't cover the issues of reconstruction that I was expecting. It did cover some of the political issues, but it was more about the African American issues. I was hoping for some of the long term repercussions in the south as a result of this horrible era.

I use portions of this DVD in my history class. It is historically accurate and the reenacted scenes are well done.

This is not the movie directed by Joe Dante as cross-referenced to Internet Movie Database, but rather a very good documentary of the tumultuous 12 years of American History following the Civil War.

Back in the days of my personal `pre-history' the Reconstruction period directly after the American Civil War ended in 1865 was cast as the time of the scalawags, carpetbaggers, Black Codes and ultimately after a determined fight by the `right' people in the South `redemption'. In short a time of shame in the American experience and, at least implicitly, a racist slap at blacks and their supporters. Well so much for that nonsense.

There certainly was plenty that went wrong during radical reconstruction in the South but the conventional high school history textbooks never got into the whole story. Nor did they want to. The whole story is that until fairly recently this radical reconstruction period was the most democratic period in the South in American history, for white and black alike. Previously, I have written some book reviews on this subject that led me to this documentary. This documentary goes a long way toward a better visual understanding of what went on in that period.

The first part of the Radical Reconstruction era was dominated by three basic plans that are described here in some detail; the aborted Lincoln `soft' union indivisible efforts; the Johnson `soft' redemption plans; and, the radical Republican `scorched earth' policy toward the South. In the end none of these plans was pursued strongly enough to insure that enhanced black rights gained through legislation would lead to enlightened citizenship. The documentary presents detailed critiques of all these plans and some insights about the social and cultural mores of the country at the time that do not make for a pretty picture.

The producers spend some time trying to demystify what the radical reconstruction governments did and did not do. This is done in the usual `even-handed' approach of PBS documentaries by the use of various individual life stories-a former slave, ex-Yankee officer and a woman plantation owner. That there were scandalous activities and more than enough corrupt politicians to go around goes without saying. However like most myths there is a snowball effect about how bad things really were that obliterates the very real advances for black (and some poor whites) like public education, improved roads and increased state facilities that were anathema to the planting class that formerly ruled the South.

The second part of the documentary deals with the conservative counter-revolution in order to overthrow the radical governments culminating in the well-known Compromise of 1877. The actions of that Southern rabble, rich and poor whites alike, formed in militias and other para-military operations like the Klan is certainly not pretty. Moreover it took about a century and a `cold' civil war during the 1960's to even minimally right that situation (a battle that continues to this day). For those that need an in depth, definitive study of this subject you must turn to the master Eric Foner (who is also one of the `talking heads', another PBS standard practice, on screen) and his monumental Reconstruction, 1863-1877. However, if you want a shorter but nevertheless informative visual overview of Reconstruction this is your first stop.

I watched and then had my adult son watch this DVD. We consider ourselves relatively well read in American history and yet this presentation taught us a great deal of incontrovertible fact about a part of American history that is woefully under-treated in American schools and colleges. I was amazed and saddened to learn about this disgraceful period, and to consider how few Americans understand what happened. To the right wing bigots who are criticizing this documentary I can only say: if only ten percent of this history is true, it would still be teaching us an important lesson: we are even more racist historically than we have been taught, and ought to be even more ashamed of what our ancestors did to people of color. It will be a long, long time before I stop considering what this fine documentary says about us.

You would think that PBS, in producing a three hour look at Reconstruction, would have the time to be comprehensive in its approach to the subject. Unfortunately, this documentary is anything but comprehensive. In its effort to present a simplistic narrative that is conveniently PC as well, this documentary ends up being woefully misleading and inadequate as a useful overview of the period.

The simplistic narrative is to look at the entire experience through the lens of attempts by the North to achieve racial equality for freed slaves in the South. All well and good. But the problem is this documentary presents a false picture of the actions of the Radical Republicans in Congress as being motivated solely by committments to racial equality, when in fact many Republicans favored extending the right to vote for blacks for reasons of crass political power that would make the Republican party a permanent majority. Telling the true story of Reconstruction means we have to be given the Radicals warts and all, and unfortunately the determination of this documentary is to leave out the warts.

Nowhere does this become more apparent in the outrageous treatment of Andrew Johnson's impeachment. There is much time spent in part one detailing Johnson's lack of enthusiasm for Reconstruction and his desire to be lenient with the south. All well and good. But it soon becomes clear that this focus is to set up the straw man idea that Johnson was an obstacle who *should* have been removed from office. How else to explain then, the reason why the impeachment and attempted removal of Johnson is suddenly, without any details, dismissed in a matter of twenty seconds?

Students who have heard of something called the Tenure Of Office Act won't hear about it here. Nor will they hear about the outrageous disregard for the impeachment process that Congress exercised in their rush to get Johnson removed. The blunt reality is that no matter how much of a racist Johnson was, he was nearly removed from office over a dangerous misuse of power committed by the Congress, who in effect demanded a veto power over a President's right to fire members of his own Cabinet. And this outrageous attempt at a power grab, when all they had to do was wait for Johnson's term of office to expire, ultimately did more harm to the cause of Reconstruction than anything else, because it depicted the Radicals as power-hungry madmen with no regard for the separation of powers and principles of the Constitution that had to be respected even in the midst of fulfilling the new duties to the rights of freed blacks.

For this documentary to pass over this incident in a multi-hour production on Reconstruction in favor of too many details on anecdotal stories on individual people in the south is a travesty, and represents a clear indicator of why students aren't learning about history properly if documentaries like this are to be their guide.

POSTSCRIPT:
Mr. Bernabo's review above, made subsequent to mine, I'm afraid misses the point of why this documentary's refusal to get into specifics regarding the Johnson Impeachment represents something very serious. There has too often been a chorus among scholars responsible for the "Revisionist" approach to Reconstruction like the notorious Eric Foner, to push the notion that Johnson deserved what he got because of his racism and to completely gloss over the horrific Constitutional issue raised by the Tenure Of Office Act. My contention is that if we don't look at the specifics behind the Consitutional abuses that the Radicals engaged in to advance their cause, we are not doing any justice to the study of Reconstruction. If we are to elevate the saintliness of the Radicals, as the Revisionist school likes to do, then we can not do so by sweeping under the rug those actions that simply can not be defended. Congressional passage of the Tenure Of Office Act did not have the potential to be a mere one-shot exercise in power based on extraordinary circumstances as Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habaes corpus had been during the Civil War. It carried with it, a very real long-term threat to the principles of separation of powers that are as much a vital part of our Constitution as the provision of equality to all. When we start ignoring this part of Reconstruction in favor of the pure social history approach favored by this documentary and the revisionist scholars, then meaningful historical inquiry is the ultimate loser.

POSTSCRIPT #2
-I am now compelled to update my review once again because of the low-road attack by Mr. Felux in his review. If I wanted to play his game, I could say some choice words about Eric Foner's stances on present-day issues (the kind that made him not popular among the families of 9/11 victims) , but I have too much respect for the premise that an assessment of Mr. Foner's views of Reconstruction should be taken apart on their own substantive merit, and that whatever stances he has on current-events issues is not relevant. Mr. Felux, in taking the opposite approach, in which he would prefer to spend more time yapping about the Bill Clinton impeachment than the Johnson impeachment as a way of criticizing my ability to be a "legitimate historian" only reveals how his own skills of analysis are seriously lacking in the credibility department.

POSTSCRIPT #3 (1/27/06)
-We now have another review by a left-wing teacher that again tries to evade the central problem of this documentary in terms of its competency to comprehensively tell the story of Reconstruction and instead engage in some partisan cheap shots. First off "Art", I never introduced my own politics into this review, that was Mr. Felux's doing when he felt a need to traipse about and look at my other reviews as his criteria for criticizing my assessment of this movie. I am a college history teacher too by profession, and if I choose to show a documentary in class as a supplement to what I teach my students, I prefer to find one that does a decent job of staying on-target. This documentary didn't do that by giving an inordinate amount of time to Eric Foner's perspective, and dismissing one of the most, if not the most critical story in the entire Reconstruction saga, regarding the facts of the Johnson Impeachment. And no amount of cheapshots from the left-wing is going to change the fact that this documentary failed miserably in its stated purpose of being a supposedly comprehensive view of Reconstruction.