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A Short History of Reconstruction

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I have never read Foner's longer treatment of this tragic period in American history, "Reconstruction, America's Unfinished Revolution," but this abridgement gives an exellent overview of the subject. Foner debunks the theory that the "Radical Republicans" were the bad guys and the Andrew Johnson was a moderate acting in the spirit of Lincoln. In fact, there was very little progress in restoring rights to freedmen during the first year or two after the Civil War under Johnson's "moderate" approach. In fact, Johnson, while a firm supporter of the Union during the war was, in his views towards blacks, a racist as demonstrated by statemnets Johnson made and which this book documents. It was only after the "Radicals" forced federal intervention that blacks made significant progress. Unfortunately, Democrats began to make headway in the South, often by the use of intimidation and violence, and what remained of the Republican party began to change it's agenda. Certainly, the Republicans in the North became indifferent, culminating in President Rutherford B. Hayes' abandonment of Reconstruction after his narrow victory over Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. This book is illumi\nating and well written. Although an abridgement, it reads smoothly rather than as a patchwork. I recommend this book to all who are interested in this underemphasized period of American history

In an attempt to document the important issues of reconstruction, Eric Foner compiled his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. This book was the basis for the abridged version titled, A Short History of Reconstruction. The shorter version is an excellent study of Reconstruction, and does not read as though it were patched together for light reading. Foner addresses all the major issues leading up reconstruction, and then finishing his book shortly after the end of reconstruction and the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
In the preface of his book, Foner discusses the historiography of Reconstruction. He notes that during the early part of the twentieth century many historians considered Reconstruction as one of the darkest periods of American history. Foner notes that this viewpoint changed during the 1960s as revisionists shed new "light" on reconstruction. The revisionists saw Andrew Johnson as a stubborn racist, and viewed the Radical Republicans as "idealistic reformers genuinely committed to black rights." (xiii) Foner notes further that recent studies of reconstruction argue that the Radicals were actually quite conservative, and most Radicals held on to their racist views and put up very little fight as the whites once again began to govern the south.
Foner initially describes the African-American experience during the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Foner argues that African-Americans were not simply figures that took little or no action in the events of the day. Foner notes the enlistment of thousands of African-Americans in the Union army during the war. Foner also notes that many of the African-Americans that eventually became civil leaders had at one time served in the Union Army. Foner states, "For men of talent and ambition, the army flung open a door to advancement and respectability." (pg. 4) Foner notes that as reconstruction progressed, African-Americans were the targets of violence and racism. Foner describes several lynchings and other violent acts blacks were subject to.
Foner believes that the transition of slaves into free laborers and equal citizens was the most drastic example of change following the end of the war. Foner notes how African-Americans were eventually forced to return to the plantations, not as slaves but as share croppers, and were thus introduced to a new form of slavery. Foner argues that this arrangement introduced a new class structure to the South. Foner states "It was an economic transformation that would culminate, long after the end of Reconstruction, in the consolidation of a rural proletariat composed of a new owning class of planters and merchants, itself subordinate to Northern financiers and industrialists. (pg. 78) Foner illustrates how both blacks and whites struggled to use the state and local governments to develop their own interests and establish their respective place in the evolving social orders.
Another theme Foner addresses in his book is racism itself and the interconnection of race and class in the South. Foner notes that racism was not just a Southern phenomenon, and this racism was a definite obstacle to social change. Foner notes the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and other groups that were established to promote violence towards blacks and those who sympathized with African-Americans. Foner shows that some Southerners were ready to work with blacks, but were thwarted by the continual pressure from the former planter class as they desired to reexert their control over blacks politically and economically.
Another subject Foner addresses is the expanded presence of federal authority, as well as a growing idea and commitment to the idea that equal rights belonged to all citizens, regardless of race. Foner shows how both Northern and Southern blacks embraced the power to vote. Foner also notes that as Reconstruction ended, many blacks saw the loss of suffrage and the loss of freedom. (pg. 128) Foner illustrates that because the presence of blacks at the poll threatened the established traditions, corruption increased, which helped to undermine the support for Reconstruction. Foner notes that because the former leaders of the Confederacy were barred from political office, who were the regions "natural leaders," a reversal of sympathies took place which portrayed the Southern whites as victims, and blacks unfit to exercise suffrage.
Foner also notes how Reconstruction affected the North as well. Foner argues that it was obviously less revolutionary than it was in the South. Foner notes that a new group of elites surfaced after the war, industrialists and railroad entrepreneurs emerged as powerful and influential leaders alongside the former commercial elite. Foner notes that the Republicans in the North did attempt to improve the lives of Northern blacks. However, Foner argues that as there were far fewer blacks in the North, it was harder for blacks to have their agendas and needs addressed in the local legislatures. Foner states, "Most Northern blacks remained trapped in inferior housing and menial and unskilled jobs." (pg. 205) Foner adds that the few jobs blacks were able to get were constantly being challenge by the huge influx of European immigrants.
Foner's subject is definitely worthy of his original volume. Reconstruction is a subject that can still be interpreted in several ways, including the revisionist school of thought. Foner seems to be as objective as possible on this subject, and has fairly addressed all major issues that apply.

This is a concise and very understandable book about the period of Recontruction--that followed the Civil War. It is well written and presents events in a context of social and cultural history.The book explores the effects of the times on the people--both in the North and in the South following the war. Highly recommended for a broad view of an amazing time in American history.

A truly fascinating time in American history, the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) is not something that enough of us are familiar enough with. Foner presents a clean account of the period leading from the closing years of the war through 1877 and the Compromise that settled the Election of 1876 that many historians regard as the end of Reconstruction, and a mark of its failure. Foner seems to make this argument, although other historians contend that Reconstruction ended in 1873 with the Colfax Massacre or with the US v. Cruikshank case.

Regardless, Foner's book is quite dense (although not nearly as bad as some other history books!) and it seems a little rushed, but the latter characteristic makes it a quick read. If you want a general idea about the era, it's a good one, but for the more serious scholar I would recommend his longer work on Reconstruction to avoid missing any key concepts that may be overlooked in this piece.

I especially commend Foner for his accurate portrayal of Johnson and the Radical Republicans. He makes neither out as saintly and rounds them out fully as historical figures with many dimensions--good and bad. He presents a clear and seemingly objective characterization of the two, as well as of other major players of the time. Although it may be criticized for its pace, one thing it cannot be criticized about is its objectivism, yet reading it slowly, one can make out Foner's clear and cogent arguments which gives the work a great amount of depth.

This is an incredible book that took an extraordinary amount of legwork to produce. It provides a glimpse into the window of Reconstruction unlike any other work, setting the record straight through a painstaking display of facts and research which destroy the old Columbia school line.

Foner tells such an awesome tale that one marvels at some of the facts he explains. In the very early years just after the fall of the slavocracy many of the districts in the south sent black representatives to state legislatures with most of these reps being no more than 25 years old. Going from bondage to seats in state congresses is unfathomable especially given that the districts had been planter strongholds since colonial times.

What Foner demonstrates to the reader is a Reconstruction complete with all the nuance and manifold complexity that such a remarkable era contained. He almost makes it impossible to believe that in actuality Reconstruction only lasted a few years before the thuggery of Redemption came into ascendance complete with white hoods, corrupt courts and northern retrenchment.

The last half of the book does a sublime job of documenting and expounding on the ways in which northern interests eventually put their ethics and morality on hold by taking a hands off approach to the massive violence, intimidation and belligerency carried out by the Klan and other wealthy southern Redeemers against reformers, blacks and Republican institutions. This is vivid history that comes alive with Foner's scholarly technique and exquisite writing style.

This is not a review of the substance of the book. I know that this is an important book and was very well written.

However, the editing, proofreading, and production of the Kindle edition is a mess. I have only read the preface and first chapter and there are typographic errors throughout both. For example, the first sentence of Chapter 1 states the year as "186.3" rather than 1863. Also, on the first page there is a random misplaced "(" in front of the word "day" in the second sentence. Another example, when using the possessive for the South it is often written as "Souths" rather than "South's." On page 7, location 259, there was a period where there should have been a comma ("...since the bulk of the upcountry remained in the Confederate lines for most of the war.[should have been a comma not a period] Unionist suffered...")Finally, there are no footnotes cited in the body of the text; a serious history book can not be published omitting footnotes (see also my review of Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion for same criticism).

If I were Eric Foner, I would be upset that my publisher submitted this rough draft as a final Kindle product. Please have the publishers submit a properly edited Kindle version and have it sent free of charge to all those who bought this terrible Kindle rough draft edition.

KindleA Short History of Reconstruction

Eric Foner's Short History is good reading. In chronologically encapsulates a unique era in history. Unfortunately, because Mr. Foner does not give very many details about the good or bad done by black legislators, it is hard to make an accurate judgment about whether black representation was a travesty or a splendid awakening. Perhaps one needs to read the uncondensed version for that. It's a great overview, however, that I would have spiced up with selected detail. (Alan J. Jacobs

A+ Suberb scholarship. Well researched. The antidote for American History as taught in K through 12. Every American, esp. those of color, need to read this. What is past is, indeed, prologue.

Full disclosure: I'm a history student at Columbia who's just finished Eric Foner's course on the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was fantastic and has a bit of a legendary status around here.

I could not ask for a better introduction to Reconstruction than this abridged version of Eric Foner's venerated Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. It does not read like an abridgement at all, though it is absolutely crammed with information. It covers the period from emancipation (1863) to the "official" end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Reconstruction has been the subject of some mythologizing that seeks to denigrate it as an experiment gone horribly wrong, a dark period of corruption and irresponsible blacks crushing innocent whites by taking over the state legislatures (the kind of mythology that maintains that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War). This myth started during Reconstruction itself and was further propagated by such historians as Columbia's own William Dunning and his followers (the so-called Southern "Bourbon" School"), who appealed to racism and black inferiority to explain the failure of Reconstruction. Unfortunately I still see people in reviews and in the the comments sections pushing this long-discredited accounts of the period. Foner demolishes the mythology and shows that Reconstruction achieved some undeniable successes and failed for many reasons, black inferiority not being among them.

Foner writes that "perhaps the remarkable thing thing about Reconstruction was not its failure, but that it was attempted at all and survived as long as it did." Indeed, there were many things going against Reconstruction--southern white recalcitrance and violence, focus of Northern attention elsewhere(labor unrest, for example), missed opportunities to ensure black political equality and economic independence (largely because of moderate and conservative elements in the Republican party), and the rise of classical liberal and social darwinism among the elite, to name a few--but the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is still on the books, the 14th Amendment is once again enforced (it was not during the era of Jim Crow), and although the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, activists got it back in the 1960s. Public education and hospitals were also a key development of Reconstruction politics.

Foner told our class about a survey of high school seniors that found that, of the all topics concerning American history on the survey, Reconstruction was the least understood and only some 20 percent could even form a coherent sentence about it. I personally have found it to be immensely more fascinating than the Civil War itself (it's funny how people seem to get so excited about the Civil War and lose all interest about what happened next). This book and Foner's course have inspired me to read much further on the topic and I hope others will too.

Eric Foner's "Short History" of Reconstruction has radically changed how the period is taught at the high school and university levels. Before Foner, the majority of texts treated the Reconstruction as a period of corruption and revenge against the south. (See for instance, the early editions of Thomas Bailey's "The American Pageant" for such a treatment.)

Foner successfully showed how Reconstruction was America's great revolution, and opened up debate on whether it was successful. Some reviewers here have mentioned lapses in Foner's version, including a lack of in-depth discussion of Black legislators. Foner's analysis is so important that very few (including DuBois) even made such questions before this book.

Today's historians of Reconstruction stand on Foner's shoulders to see farther than he did.

(The current editions of "The American Pageant" have been rewritten to consider Foner's contributions.)