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Eric Foner begins with an assessment of the historiography up to 1988. In the first decade of the 1900s, William Dunning and John W. Burgess articulated a history of Reconstruction that condemned Radical Republicans, Northern carpetbaggers, Southern scalawags, and freedmen. W.E.B. Du Bois, in 1935, and Howard Beale, in the 1940s, initiated the revisionist school, which cast Northern policymakers and freedmen in a more positive light. Foner writes of the revisionist school, “Reconstruction revisionism bore the mark of the modern civil rights movement” (<i>Short History of Reconstruction</i>, xiii). Despite their efforts to portray Reconstruction as a revolutionary moment, the social situation of the 1950s and 1960s belied that interpretation and fostered postrevisionist critiques. Foner admits the faults of the Dunning method, but believes it offered the best synthesis of the era. His work “aims to combine the Dunning School’s aspiration to a broad interpretive framework with the findings and concerns of recent scholarship” (xxiv). Summarizing the book’s impact in 2014, Foner wrote, “By the time my book appeared numerous scholars had exposed one or another weakness of the Dunning interpretation. Reconstruction was to drive the final nail into the coffin of the Dunning School and to offer an alternative account of the era” (<i>Updated Edition</i>,xxxi). Foner describes the impact of his work by citing historians who use the “unfinished revolution” framework to examine the disappointments of Reconstruction, including Stephen Kantrowitz’s <i>More Than Freedom</i> (<i>Updated Edition</i>, xl).
Foner presents a four-part argument in Reconstruction. First and foremost, he argues that African Americans “were active agents in the making of Reconstruction” (xxiv). Additionally, he argues that the changes during Reconstruction resulted from “a complex series of interactions among blacks and whites, Northerners and Southerners, in which victories were often tentative and outcomes subject to challenge and revision” (xxv). Third, “racism was an intrinsic part of the progress of historical development, which affected and was affected by changes in the social and political order” (xxvi). Finally, the same economic and class changes that occurred in the South were simultaneously occurring in the North.
Elaborating on his first point, Foner writes, “Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War, but in defining the war’s consequences. Their service helped transform the nation’s treatment of blacks and blacks’ conception of themselves” (8). Foner writes of black Republicans, “The spectacle of former slaves representing the lowcountry rice kingdom or the domain of Natchez cotton nabobs epitomized the political revolution wrought by Reconstruction” (355). When addressing class issues, Foner describes the conflict between elite and common Southerners as “a civil war within the Civil War” (15). Discussing the impact of racism on politics, Foner writes, “Even where blacks enjoyed greater influence within the party, Republican governors initially employed their influence to defeat civil rights bills or vetoed them when passed, fearing that such measures threatened the attempt to establish their administrations’ legitimacy by wooing white support” (370). Elaborating on his Southerners’ reactions to Northern involvement in the South, Foner argues against the traditional narrative of carpetbaggers, writing, “Despite instances of violent hostility or ostracism, most Southern planters recognized that Northern investment, ironically, was raising land prices and rescuing many former slaveholders from debt – in a word, stabilizing their class” (137). Foner describes the economic changes of Reconstruction, writing, “Republican rule subtly altered the balance of power in the rural South” (401), and planters, “once alone at the apex of Southern society, they now saw other groups rising in economic importance” (399). To Foner, the Northern Reconstruction involved increasing industrialization, government activism and public reform, wage-earning dominating jobs, new social opportunities for African Americans, and the rise of Gilded Age politics (460-511).
Foner draws upon various manuscripts and letters in archives throughout the United States, government documents such as Congressional records, newspapers, contemporary publications from the time of Reconstruction, and memoirs written after the fact. He also performs a great deal of synthesis of the various parts of the historiography, working to undo the legacy of the Dunning School’s racism. As Foner wrote in 2014, “Most books in the New American Nation Series summarize, often very ably, the current state of historical scholarship, rather than rely on new research” (<i>Updated Edition</i>, xxix). His contribution blends the two approaches.
- Series: Perennial Classics
- Paperback: 736 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Illustrated edition (February 5, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060937165
- ISBN-13: 978-0060937164
- Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 172 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#925,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1356 in Political History (Books)
- #3272 in African History (Books)
- #4069 in U.S. Civil War History
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