History of the United the Final Restoration Volumes VI and VII.

BOOK REVIEWS.

RECONSTRUCTION.

States from the Compromise of 1850 to of Home Rule at The South in 1877. By James Ford Rhodes. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1906-pp. xx, 440; xiii, 431.

Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. By Walter L Fleming, Ph.D., Professor of History in West Virginia University. The Columbia University Press. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1905—pp. xxiii, 815.

Documentary History of Reconstruction, Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial. 1865 to the Present Time. Volumes I and II. By Walter L. Fleming, Ph.D. Cleveland, Ohio, The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1906, 1907— pp. xviii, 493; xiv, 480.

Twice during our history as an independent nation have our public men been called upon for the exercise of constructive statesmanship of a high order. The first was during the ten years immediately following the close of the Revolution; the second was during a like period following the close of the Civil War. In the first period American statesmen were confronted by the various economic and social evils resulting from the long war of independence and the disorders which had preceded it. These evils were not perhaps very great in themselves. They were not to be compared with those which afflicted France before her Revolution or England during the generation following the close of the Napoleonic wars. However, the situation was more than ordinarily serious. Our statesmen had to make and administer the laws called for by these economic and social difficulties, but before they could make these laws and carry them out they had to create the governmental machinery with which they were to do their work. This was their great problem. They had to do the ordinary work of practical statesmen, and in addition they must do the work of political philosophers in the formation of a new constitution. On both its theoretical and practical sides their work will always stand among the most brilliant and successful examples of statesmanship in the history of the world.

In the second case the situation was no less difficult than in the first though the nature of the difficulties was very

different.

The statesmen of that period were not called upon to create any new political institutions nor indeed to essentially modify the old ones. They had only to restore as nearly as possible to its original form the government which a part of the people had tried to overthrow. On its political side their work was one of restoration only and not of construction. Nevertheless, it was not without its special difficulties, the chief of which was to cause two bitterly hostile communities, who had waged the most bloody and expensive wars of modern times, to forget their enmity and dwell together in peace and harmony. They must see to it that the conquered South should not become an Ireland or a Poland in our political system. It was not, however, on its political side that the work of reconstruction presented its greatest difficulties; more important by far was the social problem involved in the emancipation of the slaves. It was necessary to provide for the immediate evils of the sudden transition of a large part of the community from the condition of slavery to that of free labor, so as not to ruin that community or hopelessly degrade the emancipated race itself. They were called upon also to look far into the future and to lay the foundation for that slow development of the negro race and the adjustment of its relation to the white race which every thoughtful student of southern society had foreseen would be the most difficult problem of emancipation. Here the work of the statesmen of reconstruction touched what Mr. Brice calls, "one of the great secular problems of the world presented under a form of peculiar difficulty." It is the one great social evil that American statesmen have had to deal with, and far transcends all others in its difficulties and far-reaching importance. It is safe to say that American statesmen will never receive such commendation for their work of reconstruction on either its political or social side as has been accorded them for the work of political construction after the revolutionary war. Indeed the very qualities which have rendered their work in the earlier period so distinguished-that wise, far-sighted conservatism which made them turn to history rather than to speculation and theory for their political institutions, and kept them from trying any radical experiments along this line-are quite as conspicuous by their absence in the later period as by their presence in the earlier No reformer of the French Revolution was more dominated by the idea of natural rights or the perfectibility of human nature than the reconstruction radicals of the type of Sumner, and few

one.

people ever tried a more extraordinary experiment in political theory, than the granting of suffrage to a large population of ignorant negroes just freed from slavery.

Historians have only recently begun to study this important period. But already we possess in the works of Burgess, Dunning, Rhodes, Garner and Fleming, a fairly satisfactory account of its political history, and one remarkably free from that strong sectional prejudice which might be expected to color for a long time whatever was written upon it. Much the most important contribution yet made to the subject is that of Mr. Rhodes. The final volumes of his great history of the United States from the compromise of 1850, cover this period. Like the former volumes they are in form and title a history of the country—that is, an account of the activity of the American people during this period. In fact they are devoted almost entirely to the politics of the period. The author makes little attempt to give an account of the various changes which took place in American society, and to explain their cause and consequences. He confines himself for the most part to an account of the action of the Government, and an explanation of whatever influenced that action. This was true of the first volumes especially, which dealt with the decade from 1850 to 1860, when American politics were absorbed in, and dominated by, the slavery controversy. To a less extent it was true also of the next three volumes, which dealt with the civil war. It remains true of these concluding volumes of the series, which are devoted to the period of reconstruction. Other subjects such as finance and currency, commercial crises, political corruption, the tariff, and the broader economic and social changes affecting American society are not ignored, as they were not in the previous volumes; but they are not adequately treated, and the author shows in his treatment of them none of that breadth of view and well-balanced judgment which appears in his account of the political controversies that have to do with slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. The same consideration which induced him to abandon or postpone writing the history of the country after 1877, viz., "a lack of basic knowledge for attacking the social questions involved" (see preface), have prevented him from giving a satisfactory account of a large part of the activity of the American people during the period he has covered. These remarks are not offered in criticism of his work but only to point out its perfectly proper limitations and to justify the classification of these last two volumes with books on reconstruction.

In judging any work on this subject it is necessary to bear in mind what I have already indicated, that reconstruction involved the solution of two problems, not one. There was the political problem of restoring the States to their former relation to the Union, and inducing the southern people to accept that relation in good faith. In addition to this there was the vastly more difficult and far-reaching social problem of adjusting the relations of the two races so that neither should suffer by the change that had come about, and southern society be put on the road to prosperity. It was to be expected that the first matter would receive much more attention at the hands of Mr. Rhodes than the second, and in fact that is the case. On this side of the subject he leaves very little to be desired either in thoroughness of investigation, freedom from sectional prejudice, or judgment of the character of public men and the measures which they represented. He sets forth with great clearness and force the different plans of reconstruction, both those that were tried and those that were rejected. He does not make the mistake of so many historians in dealing with such a subject, of confining himself to a mere narration of events. He realizes, to use his own words applied to a later period, that "to write purely a narrative history would be to shirk a duty and to miss the significance of the period." That duty is to form judgments both of the character of the statesmen and the wisdom of their measures, and in order to do this it is necessary to consider not only what was actually done but what might have been done as well. "To form any opinion. or estimate of a great national policy," says Sir John Seeley, "is impossible, so long as you refuse even to imagine any other policy pursued." In this matter Mr. Rhodes has not shirked his duty, nor failed to exercise that historic imagination which is the handmaid of judgment. His discussion of the necessity for the adoption of the congressional policy in the early part of the first volume (pp. 23-50), as well as of its results in the second volume (pp. 168-173), is one of the best examples of the kind of writing which used to be attributed to the "philosophical historian," that can be found in the literature of political history. Here is that weighing and judging of events which is at once the great duty and the great task of the historian.

Mr. Rhodes does not mince matters in these general conclusions. He declares of the act of 1867, "that no law so unjust in its policy, so direful in its results had passed the American Congress

since the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854." The avowed reason for its passage was, that a state of anarchy existed at the south and that under existing governments the lives of loyal whites and negroes were not protected. He declares that there was no sufficient evidence of the truth of this view, that the assertions of the radicals were exaggerated, strongly biased, and in the case of Stevens, not entitled to any credence at all. On the contrary the trend of legislation in the southern States in 1867 was distinctly favorable to the negro and conditions were as good as could be expected, "considering the immense revolution, the large number of idle soldiers and guerillas the sparsely settled country

in which there had always been a lax administration of the law, and the great fact of all, this mass of black men suddenly freed from the restraint of slavery," as well as the quarrel between the President and Congress and the distress arising from short crops. It is of course too much to expect that these conclusions shall receive general assent at this time, and they may need some modification, as further investigation into the social conditions of the south following the war are made, but the available evidence thus far seems to support them and the author should be commended for the masterly way in which he has marshalled that evidence and for his courage in drawing conclusions from it. It is so much easier to take refuge in the presentation of the considerations which bear on either side of such a question with no attempt to decide where the truth really lies. As to the results of the congressional policy, his conclusions are no less definite and positive and are perhaps less likely to be questioned. "No large policy in our country has ever been so conspicuous a failure as that of forcing universal suffrage upon the south." "The scheme of reconstruction pandered to the ignorant negroes, the knavish white natives and the vulturous adventurers who flocked from the north, and these neutralized the work of honest republicans who were officers of state. Intelligence and property stood bound and helpless under negro carpet-bag rule, and the fact that such governments continued. to exist, were supported by Federal authority and defended by prominent republicans, had a share in the demoralization of politics. at the north." "From the Republican policy came no real good to the negro, he had a brief period of mastery and indulgence during which his mental and moral education was deplorable and his worst passions were catered to." "Finally by force, by craft and by law, his old masters have deprived him of the ballot, and