Reconstruction
A Concise History
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what to do with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy and allowed repressive measures such as the "black codes," would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction.
While Reconstruction saw the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, expanding the rights and suffrage of African Americans, it largely failed to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and the rise of Jim Crow. It also struggled to manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern free-labor economy. However, these failures cannot obscure a number of accomplishments with long-term consequences for American life, among them the Civil Rights Act, the election of the first African American representatives to Congress, and the avoidance of renewed civil war. Reconstruction suffered from poor leadership and uncertainty of direction, but it also laid the groundwork for renewed struggles for racial equality during the civil rights movement.
In this concise history, award-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on the American social fabric.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to Civil War historian Guelzo's concise and lucidly written study, the 12-year period popularly known as Reconstruction is the "ugly duckling of American history," representing to many a tragically missed opportunity to establish racial equality. The project was innately challenging, he argues, raising difficult questions about the meaning of the Confederate states' secession from the Union and the position of formerly enslaved people in the postbellum United States. Guelzo emphasizes that "not everything that should have been gained was gained in Reconstruction, but not everything was lost, either." Following a chronological approach, he briefly sketches out the methods, including overt political resistance and the substitution of "freedman" for "slave" in state legal codes, by which white Southerners tried to subvert the federal government's attempts to restructure Southern society to empower its black and poor white inhabitants. He concurs with Ulysses S. Grant that Reconstruction's goals could only have been accomplished through a significantly longer military occupation of the South, but most Northerners felt this "was not in accordance with our institutions." This reluctance resulted in strict limitations on the opportunities available to African-Americans. Guelzo's short book is highly informative for readers seeking a better understanding of a short but tumultuous era that continues to influence race relations in the United States.
