Book Review: America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War

Book Review: America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War

In America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney analyze one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history-Reconstruction. The book, which as the authors note, was written in conjunction with a major exhibition on the Reconstruction period at the Valentine Museum in Richmond, offers the reader an innovative glance at race relations and the struggle for equality, two of the main elements of American history. Racial dynamics represent the cornerstone of Foner’s and Mahoney’s interest, and, in a series of chapters, they address the attempts made to solve the political, social, and economic problems arising between white elites and freed blacks in the New South.
The book begins by exploring how the destruction of slavery was one among several considerations that led the Lincoln administration down the road to emancipation. This transformed the nature of the Civil War and altered the problem of reconstruction, because the termination of slavery implied great changes in the South’s economy, race relations, and politics. The authors elaborate that President Abraham Lincoln planned to readmit states in which at least ten percent of the voters had pledged loyalty to the Union (10 Percent Plan) and that this lenient approach was opposed by the Radical Republicans, who favored the harsher measures passed by the Wade-Davis Bill. The book then details how President Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln’s moderate policies, but enactment in the South of the black codes and demand in the North for stricter legislation resulted in victories for Radical Republicans in the congressional elections of 1866. Chapter 3 highlights the passing of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which established military districts in the South and required the Southern states to accept the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Foner and Mahoney also stress that Southern resentments of the imposed state governments included...

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