West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Hardcover)

by Professor Heather Cox Richardson (Author)
Key Phrases: free labor dream, free labor vision, evenhanded government, African Americans, United States, Civil War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This thoughtful, engaging examination of the Reconstruction Era began as a way for author and historian Richardson to understand the deep divide-over issues like taxes, size of government and the influence of special interests-that still separate "red states" from "blue states." Richardson's persuasive thesis is that the Reconstruction, rather than the Civil War itself, is the place to look for guidance through these thorny problems. Beginning with a dramatic retelling of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Va., Richardson immerses readers in the issues faced by Americans trying to restore the Union on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Although her research is primarily informed by a social approach to history, Richadrson strikes a fine balance between the everyman experience and the trials of famous leaders. And because Richardson views Reconstruction as fundamental to the shape of contemporary America, she makes this period not only engaging but utterly relevant. This title will be appealing, therefore, not only to those interested in 19th century American history or the Civil War, but also to anyone interested in the roots of present-day American politics.
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From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Edward L. Ayers

The 50 years following the American Civil War often come to us as a blur of disconnected images from old Westerns and "Gone With the Wind," a hiatus between the drama of the Civil War and World War I. The presidents seem faceless, the political issues bland. Our eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the word "tariff," not to mention "civil service reform."

But in her ambitious West From Appomattox, Heather Cox Richardson argues that these years, far from being uneventful or insignificant, saw nothing less than the reconstruction of America, a recasting of the relationship between the government and the people. It was in late 19th century, she believes, that the fundamental issues that divide us today -- between those who want to keep government small and those who want to use government to create opportunity and justice -- took shape across a newly expanded and consolidated nation.

To make space for her argument, Richardson casts aside the conventional understanding of "the Reconstruction of America after the Civil War." Reconstruction usually focuses on the defeated South, on the effort of the U.S. government to create equality and freedom for the 4 million people who had been held as slaves for more than two centuries. Richardson, a historian at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, thinks this approach misses the larger point. For her, the three generations after the Civil War saw all of America transformed -- but with the South transformed least of all.

The real action lay on the wide-open plains of the West and in the energetic cities of the North. Nineteenth-century readers grew weary of the endless and bloody Reconstruction struggles in the South, Richardson shows us, and preferred instead to read exciting stories of cattle drives, transcontinental railroads, silver mines, and wars against the Comanche, Apache and Sioux.

She tells her story as a collective biography, focusing on people who left autobiographies of successful strivings. Individuals stand in for millions. (The cast here could be labeled: starring Wade Hampton as "The White Southerner," with Jane Addams as "The Feminist" and Quanah Parker as "The American Indian.")

The real stars of the story are the people Richardson calls "mainstream" Americans. These mainstreamers wanted everyone to get along without help from the government. They talked a great deal about respectability, independence, responsibility, energy and opportunity. They worried a great deal about labor unions, Southern blacks, Southern whites, American Indians, populists, feminists -- anyone who wanted anything more from the federal government than to be left to rise or fall on their own. The mainstream voters of the Gilded Age, in other words, look a great deal like the broad center of the electorate today, for whose affections and attention the Republicans and Democrats still compete.

Richardson's perspective is engaging and reveals much that is fresh. But the continuity of American politics may be even greater than she thinks. The broadest and most enduring division between red states and blue states grew out of slavery and the war it created. The fundamental arguments about the role of government were around since the days of Andrew Jackson, a half-century before Reconstruction. And the levers of party, profit, policy and patronage -- hidden in Richardson's placid portrait of mainstream voters -- moved American politics throughout the 19th century no less than now.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; annotated edition edition (March 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300110529
• ISBN-13: 978-0300110524
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #541,775 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking and unique, April 18, 2007

By	James Durney (Tampa Bay area) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Conventional history teaches that Reconstruction failed due to racism and apathy, while viewing it as a Southern issue. Heather Cox Richardson moves Reconstruction into mainstream America, viewing it not as a Southern issue but as part of national development and westward expansion. Doing this transforms the thin gruel of reconstruction history into a complex, layered dish full of unexpected and very new treats. Reconstruction changes from a fight between President and Congress, to an issue that challenges America's ideals and is national in scope.

This book links Reconstruction, westward expansion, questions on suffrage, controlling business, tariffs and the development of the middle class into one coherent movement. This is modern inclusive history, as it should be written! Nat Love, child of ex-slaves, cowboy and Pullman porter, Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Wade Hampton, Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and many others populate the book. They are included not to be inclusive but because they have something to say. In every case, they help with the narration by personalizing history and making the national problem a personal one. The result is a fuller richer picture of America and the development of American ideals from 1865 to 1901.

The author, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, is not the conservative member of the university staff. Her politics show up as sympathy for the labor movement, African Americans and/or Native Americans. For the most part, this is neither excessive nor detracts from the fairness of the narration. The exception is in the Epilogue where she attacks the policies of Presidents Regan and Bush. If you share her liberal politics, this will be the highpoint of the book for you. If you do not, stop reading when you reach the Epilogue and close the book. You will have read a very thought provoking history presenting a detailed and unique view of America and Reconstruction.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good review of Reconstruction and westward expansion, July 1, 2007

By	Shawn S. Sullivan (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Heather Cox Richardson's West from Appomattox covers a period of history that has been seemingly rather ignored by contemporary historians, namely the Reconstruction period and westward expansion in the mid to late 1800s. Cox synthesizes much history and puts it into its broader context quite well. Much of her writing is academic in nature and not of the narrative form many readers of recent historical accounts have come to expect. Specifically, Richardson studied under the master of this period, David Herbert Donald. While the breadth of her research and knowledge is as impressive as any, her ability to convey the information in a way that brings in any person with even a passing interest in the topic is not her strength. I think she has much to say and, should she want to write history in a form other than a graduate text level, she would be well served to read how David Kennedy, David Herbert Donald, James McPherson or even Doris Kearns Goodwin actually write. That said, those who would like to really bone up on what changes the United States went through from 1865 to 1900, predominately politically and somewhat economically, would be well advised to read this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reconstruction and the American West, January 31, 2008

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In "West from Appomatox", Professor Heather Cox Richardson focuses on the role of the American West in defining the American experience and the American character in the decades following the Civil War to the present. Richardson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The story of Reconstruction is usually viewed as involving the victorious North and the defeated South. In the opening chapters of her book, Richardson gives a good brief summary of the Reconstruction era. But she does not stop there. She goes on to show how the West became emblematic during Reconstruction, for both Northerners and Southerners, of the promise of America. The idealized image of the American West came to symbolize "individualism. economic opportunity, and political freedom." (p. 221) In many ways, Richardson's view of the importance of the West is similar to that of the great early historian of this period, Frederick Jackson Turner. Richardson indeed brefly discusses (pp 281-283) Turner's famous thesis of the end of the American frontier and its significance.

The West became attractive to Northerners as a place for independence and opportunity, where the corruptions of large businesses and the agitation of the labor unions could be put aside. For Southerners, the West became a place to escape from the poverty that followed the Civil War and from the difficulties of Reconstruction. With the idealizing of the West, for Richardson, came a view that all Americans shared the same interests and the same ways of achieving success -- that they were "working their way up together." (p.1) This view led to the formation of a broad middle class, opposed on one side to the large concentrations of economic power in corporations and financial institutions and on the other side to "special interest groups" such as labor unions, African Americans, the poor, and strident advocates of women's rights. The emerging middle class viewed these groups as seeking special favors and entitlements while the middle class saw the role of the government as preserving impartiality and equality in its treatment of all people. The groups on the outside of this consensus, in their turn, pointed to structural factors in the United States which promoted inequality and unfairness and which required government intervention to correct. The middle class also tended to overlook the many affirmative government actions necessary to sustain its own view of America.

Richarson develops her narrative from the Reconstuction Era through the first appearance of "Liberal Republicanism" in 1872, to the terms of the reforms of Grover Cleveland, and through President McKinley and the Spanish American War. The political figure that most exemplifies, for Richardson, the spirit of this era is Theodore Roosevelt, who gets a great deal of attention in his early reforming years in New York City, in his venture to the West, as the leader of the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill and as the President. Richardson also devotes a great deal of attention to Owen Wister's novel, "The Virginian" as emblematic of American values at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Richardon's narrative tells of both broad events and of individuals that she sees as representative of some aspect of the development of the United States during the post-Civil War period. These individuals include, among others, former Confederate General Wade Hampton, Julia Ward Howe, the African American cowboy Nat Love, Buffalo Bill, Samuel Gompers, Indian leaders such as Sitting Bull, Geronimo and the Commanche leader Quanah. Their stories are told together with the broader historical narrative of Richardson's account, and sometimes interfere with its flow.

Richardson sees in the rise of the American middle class that followed the Civil War the sources of the divisions that continue to characterize American society between those who favor government intervention to assist disadvantaged groups and those who oppose it, even while benefiting from government activism themselves. Richardson finds much to be said for both sides, and for the opportunity for advancement and independence created by the emerging middle class, even though her sympathies clearly lie on the side of an activist government role. She writes, (p. 7): "America is neither excellent nor oppressive; rather it is both at the same time. In 1865, Americans had to reconstruct their shattered nation. Their solution "reconstructed" America into what it is today."

This is a thoughtful study of American history with provocative observations on the American character.

Robin Friedman