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Title: The Reconstruction Presidents by Brooks D. Simpson ISBN: 0-7006-0896-6 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: July, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A viewing of a crucial period......
Comment: One of the most intriguing possibilities one can surrender to is the notion of how history may have differed if consequences were altered. The Reconstruction Presidents examines the lives of the 4 men faced with the challenge of tightening the newly formed knot of the once more Unified States. Beginning with Lincoln, who may have had the vision of the plan before a precise bullet wound dimmed it, Simpson ponders how reconstruction may have begun under Lincoln's reign. With the abrupt arrival of Andrew Johnson and his blatently racist views, reconstruction was lost during these formidable years. The torch passed to Ulysses Grant, who lives in infamy as one of the nation's least effective presidents. He was forced to clean up the damage and mistrust done by Johnson and unify not only blacks and whites, but political and demographic groups alike avoiding the chance of offending any particular group. Simpson poses the question, if Grant had not been in office, who would have and where would the country have gone? I enjoyed the notion of perhaps reanalyzing Grant's presidency. The least known, Rutherford B. Hayes, some would say was the benefactor of a nation willing to surrender and come together. Simpson presents a man who may not be remembered in history by the common citizen, but makes him no less important. An interesting viewpoint on a debated subject.
Rating: 4
Summary: An unusual new take on a crucial moment in US history.
Comment: Simpson makes us wonder what Lincoln's post-war policies would have been, had a carriage accident kept him from his appointment at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. How would he have resolved the conflict between two of his goals, reconciling the (white) elites of North and South on the one hand, protecting the newly freed men and women on the other? What would "reconstruction" have meant to him? In his second inaugural address, Lincoln spoke of "malice toward none" and "charity for all." But that is an aspiration, not a program. Would it have been possible to act in a way that both the old plantation aristocracy and their former chattels would have regarded as charitable?! Simpson reminds us that by the end of 1865, President Johnson and the Republican Party had gone their separate ways. The leaders of the party, firmly in control of Congress, theorized that the states that had seceded had committed a sort of juridical 'suicide' and could only be restored to life when it, the Congress, thought they had proven their fitness. In the meantime, military occupation and control would continue. That was a difficult policy to pursue, though, if the commander in chief of that military thought reconstruction ought to end, the freedmen left to their fate in the face of the Klan. Congress tried to address this situation by ensuring that it had in the President's cabinet a friendly secretary of war, thus short-circuiting the chain of command. Johnson is in many ways the "heavy" of Simpson's reading of the period. Simpson is, accordingly, sympathetic to the difficulties faced by the leaders of that Congress and to their eventual decision to end those difficulties through the extraordinary process of impeachment and trial. All in all, this is not a perfect, but it is a fascinating, book.
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Title: Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 by Brooks D. Simpson ISBN: 0807819662 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 by Kenneth M. Stampp ISBN: 039470388X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: October, 1967 List Price(USD): $13.60 |
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