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Title: Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner ISBN: 0-06-093716-5 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A masterpiece of American history
Comment: Based on 98 sets of private papers and more than fifty contemporary periodicals and newspapers, Eric Foner's Reconstruction is a superbly researched work of history. But this book is more than simply a synthesis that refutes the racist Dunning school interpretations. It is an invaluable and innovative work of history in its own right. First, Foner emphasizes the self-activity of the African-American community in its own right, as ex-slaves struggle to form their own churches, educate their children, revive their family life and mobilize themselves for political action. Second, Foner notes that racism cannot be seen as a diabolos de machina, dooming Reconstruction policies on the shoals of immutable prejudice, but as a complex phenomenon that, though very powerful, was also effected by other forces. Third, and perhaps most important, Foner explains the Reconstruction period as part of a transition towards capitalism. He is excellent on the implications and limitations of the Republican free labor policy, and on how African-Americans and white yeomanry tried to maintain their independence from the market and were ultimately sabatoged in this goal by the malevolence of the reconfigured and reconstitued Southern elite. For these passages alone, Foner has made an invaluable contribution to a Marxist interpretation of American history.
One should not forget Foner's considerable skills of summarization and detail. One remembers such details as the fact that Andrew Johnson was so cheap and penny-pinching that he opposed aid to assist the victims of the Irish potato famine. One is struck repeatedly by the use of violence to defeat Reconstruction (300 African-Americans alone were murdered by vigilantes in the summer of 1874 in Mississippi). One is also struck by Foner's insight on many issues. When I first read this book thirteen years I was amazed to realize that white opposition to the Confederacy was not simply confined to West Virginia and border states like Tennessee, but also to the interior regions of Alabama and North Carolina. There is also Foner's portrait of Lincoln who, if less than heroic in this account, is redemmed by an open-mindedness and willingness to consider alternatives. Foner also refutes the vulgar Beardian view that the Republican Radicals were nothing more than an advance army for Northern Industrialists, though at the same time pointing out the limitations of their laissez faire ideology. As the best volume in the Harper and Row New American Nation series one should point out that Foner also goes into detail about the transformation of the North, the rise of industrial capitalism, of labor protest, of the fate of the women's suffrage movement, and the brutal conquest of the West. Foner is also acute on the difficulties between the black-white alliance in much of the South, which was not merely the result of white racism, but also the undermining of yeomary independence and the contradictions of Southern Republican policy. (It needed to raise taxes to insure vital public services like education, but it also tried to encourage market production at a time when massive debt and low commodity prices insured the weakening of small landholders.)
But what makes Foner's account so superb is that it is a moving and haunting narrative of a great injustice and a great tragedy. Foner discusses the ungeneous attitude of the post Civil war Southern elite as they sought to reintroduce as much of slavery as they could, and as they vitiated education and the judiciary and other protections for freed people. To everyone's surprise the Radical Republicans are able to arouse enough popular opposition to overcome this. But they are limited by a tragic flaw: their free labour ideology cannot recognize the reality of class struggle. Their laissez-faire ideology limits their options. Foner is excellent on the fate of the land question, and he points out that land itself would not have ensured Africa-American prosperity. But every little bit helps and every little bit hurts. As one reads the results of "Redemption," and the rise of violence, disfranchisement, the sacking of black education, the adulteration of the judicial and creditor system to benefits whites against blacks and planters against everyone else, one learns a vital truth. The Reconstruction era was arguably the Republican party's finest hour, as it willingly went to the defense of a despised and powerless minority. By contrast, with its psychotic racism and fatuous laissez-faire cant, this was one of the worst hours of any American conservatism. In his History of the American People, Woodrow Wilson once condescendingly referred to the ex-slaves as "a host of dusky children untimely let out of school." Of course, slavery was a school whose pupils were forbidden to read and never allowed to graduate from. In reading this book, one can feel only rage at those intellectuals who euphemize violence and condescend to its victims.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thoughtful and thorough look at a nexus in american history
Comment: Eric Foner once again makes an important contribution to the understanding of our nations history of the mid-to-late 19th century. In this book, Foner picks an epoch of our nations history that is so fraught with passion and hyberpole that it is often difficult to sift through the heat and noise to undestand the critical substrate. Foner examines the critical contributers to the shaping of this period (abolitionists, negros, southern sympathizers and the 19th century political machines) and fairly and thoroughly articulates their motivations, tactics and the ultimate result of their efforts. Most refreshingly, Foner spends ample time examining the contributions of the freed slaves themselves - a needed counterpoint to history from both sides of the debate which focus on the freed slave as either victim or usurper, but which rarely offers insight into their motivations and the more subtle aspects of their achievements. While other histories have focused on such achievements as the election of negros to the position of senator, etc., Foner looks at more lasting impacts such as the formation of the independent black churches and the shift of black labor patterns from gang-work to independent sharecroppers working subsistence plots. Added to such insights are a wealth of references of other eminent scholars of the period and a wider view of 19th century america within which to place an understanding of reconstruction. All in all an excellent read. I highly recommend.
Rating: 5
Summary: The definitive Reconstruction book
Comment: Dozens of books have been written about the Civil War, but so few have been written about the period afterward, known as Reconstruction. One picture this book paints is of a 3-way feud among the rich whites (who had owned plantations & slaves before the war), the poor whites (who had been self-sufficient farmers) & the emancipated slaves. The war & Reconstruction changed the lives of all 3 groups forever, not necessarily for the better. For those who want to know more about this chapter of American history than they were taught in high-school & college history classes, this is the definitive book.
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Title: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES) by James M. McPherson ISBN: 019516895X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 by Kenneth M. Stampp ISBN: 039470388X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 12 October, 1967 List Price(USD): $13.60 |
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Title: Impending Crisis by David Morris Potter ISBN: 0061319295 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 15 April, 1977 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War by Eric Foner ISBN: 0195094972 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Search for Order, 1877-1920 by Robert H. Wiebe ISBN: 0809001047 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 01 January, 1966 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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