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76 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reconstruction Revisited, January 1, 2003
A major undertaking. Eric Foner and Leon Litwack (Been in the Storm so Long) have rescued Reconstruction from the dustbin of history. Each has offered a timely re-exploration into one of the most pivotal periods in American History. For Foner, Reconstruction represents the often forgotten conclusion to the Civil War, an attempt to address the social injustices that resulted from over two centuries of slavery. What is even more compelling about Foner's account is that he absorbs the early women's suffrage movement into this early battle for Civil Rights.This remarkably well-researched book gives probably the most thorough examination of Reconstruction to date. Foner begins in 1863 with the emancipation proclamation, and carries the era through to 1877, when a fateful compromise was reached by Republicans and Democrats which led to the notorious period of Redemption, in which most of the gains during this period of time were nullified. Foner covers a tremendous amount of ground. He has uncovered old court records and other valuable information, which demonstrate just how active a role Blacks had in Reconstruction. He notes the seminal work of W.E.B. DuBois (Black Reconstruction in America), which went largely ignored by the "Dunning School," which interpreted Reconstruction as an unmitigated failure in social improvement. Foner, like DuBois, notes how many beneficial social changes came as a result of Reconstruction such as public health, education and welfare. But the Redeemers could hardly stand to see Blacks in power, and fought tooth and nail to re-establish the old social order in the South, finally winning over the Grant administration, which pardoned the Southern states, and allowed them to regain the political ascendency, much to the chagrin of the Radical Republicans, who had been instrumental in shaping the Civil Rights legislation of this time. This book presents so many revealing portraits. It is as much a social as it is a political history of Reconstruction. Of the many compelling stories was the attempt by Blacks to make a thriving concern of the former Jefferson Davis plantation. Despite the fact that Jefferson Davis' brother had ceded the plantation to the former slaves, the Mississippi courts eventually gave title to Davis' heirs. During this brief halcyon period, the freedmen had made a success of the plantation, never realized under the Davis administration. Foner offers this case, as well as many others, to demonstrate that the former slaves were fully committed to Reconstruction, and so this as the opportunity to gain the social and political ascendency they had long been denied. One is left to wonder what it might have been like had callous Republicans like Rutherford B. Hayes not sold out Reconstruction, and allowed the process to continue through the late 19th century. Instead, the Redeemers nullified much of what had been gained, leading to the notorious era of Jim Crow.
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70 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The standard for Reconstruction scholarship, August 22, 2000
Eric Foner breaks no new ground with this book. The demolition of the traditional portrayal of Reconstruction as a period of unmitigated evil and injustice, where rapacious and corrupt Northerners joined with incompetent black Southerners to deny virtuous white Southerners of their rightful place in government, began as early as 1909; with a paper presented by WEB DuBois at Columbia University. The demolition was largely completed by Kenneth Stampp's 1965 book about Reconstruction, and it would be difficult to find a reputable scholar today who would disagree with the general premise of revisionist scholarship about Reconstruction: that while Reconstruction state governments and the Republican Congress were very much creatures of their time, they accomplished much that was good and noble, and that the criticisms of them by the Redeemers and their sympathizers in the academic community were frequently unjust and based on bald racial prejudice.Instead of breaking new ground, Foner's book does an admirable job consolidating the revisionist consensus. With his emphasis on the role that the former slaves themselves played in Reconstruction, he emphatically rejects the notion, sometimes present even in revisionist scholarship, that somehow whites... were the only agents in Reconstruction. Likewise, he presents a nuanced portrayal of the Republican coalition in Congress that enacted the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, the Reconstruction Acts, the Enforcement Acts, and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871: they were not monolithic Radicals, nor were the Radicals among them monolithic in their goals and ideals. Finally, he does an admirable job of replacing Reconstruction in the social, economic, and global context that so many accounts have managed to remove it from. Foner's prose is lucid and engaging, and his book is well-researched... and well-organized aside from a couple of minor editorial lapses... It is more complete and more all-encompassing than any other single-volume book about Reconstruction that I know about, and it ought to be the starting point for anyone interested in the period. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sad, Sad Story, October 17, 2006
This book is excellent, but it's thick and heavy going. I found a reduced edition in paperback which I started to read first, but soon found that I preferred the detail and color in the full edition. Reconstruction was a genuine tragedy and one that could have been avoided if the federal government under President Grant had cared about what was happening to the blacks in the south. Even after the Ku Klux Klan killing spree of 1865-66, murder and lynching continued to occur and massacres too, as the white population attempted to avoid negro suffrage and negro economic independence. By the end of the era, white supremacy was firmly reestablished, and things remained that way for another century. I found to my surprise that some of the figures I had learned to hate were not bad men at all: Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican, strove for civil rights, and also in Congress, Ben Butler, the political general of the Civil War and buffoon of New Orleans, was even more radical, opting for total suffrage, including giving women the vote.
It's depressing reading, loss after loss after loss, but for anyone who wants really to understand why our history is so blotted with evil periods, the book is a must. Five stars.
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