Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality (Loa #303)

Reconstruction In The Library Of America

This book, "Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality" (2018)is the most recent of a series of volumes from the Library of America that present first-hand source material on critical moments and themes of American history. The volume is edited by Brooks Simpson, ASU Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, and a widely-published scholar on Reconstruction, the Civil War, and Ulysses Grant. Simpson selected the texts and wrote the explanatory material included in this volume. He also co-edited the four-volume Library of America set "The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It" which includes first-hand source material covering the Civil War and which makes a companion set to this volume on Reconstruction.

As Simpson writes in his Introduction, "[m]ost Americans don't know very much about Reconstruction, and in many cases, what they may think they know is wrong." The Reconstruction Era is generally thought to extend from 1865, with the end of the Civil War, to 1877, when Rutherford B. Hayes became president after a disputed election. Events of this period remain hazy and confused, even to many people with knowledge of the Civil War. In addition, study of the Reconstruction Era has been controversial. For many years, Reconstruction was viewed as an effort by corrupt Northern politicians and carpetbaggers in the company of scalawags (Southerners sympathetic to the North) to use African Americans to plunder the South for their own purposes and to destroy what they saw as home rule and white supremacy. Later scholars have revised this picture substantially. They see Reconstruction as a failed attempt to follow-through on the promise of the Civil War and to establish the civil rights of African Americans in the South and in the nation as a whole. The failure of Reconstruction resulted in the Jim Crow, intimidation, and segregation that prevailed in the South until the 1960s. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is often called the "Second Reconstruction" and is documented in first-hand accounts in two additional Library of America volumes.

This volume of source material includes a variety of contemporary perspectives on Reconstruction by those who lived and made it to show that the Era constituted "America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality." The volume includes over 120 entries, including letters, speeches, debates, legislative enactments, reports, newspaper accounts journal and diary entries, and much more, to show how Reconstruction issues were viewed at the time and how thought about them changed during the Era. They discuss matters such as the nature of liberty, of American citizenship, of different understandings of equality, of the nature of law, of violence and terrorism, and of the American experiment in government. The volume includes writings by famous Americans, including, briefly, President Lincoln, whose shadow appears over the entire Era, his successor, President Andrew Johnson, and President Ulysses Grant who served the two terms prior to the disputed presidential election of 1876. The volume also includes entries by many other famous and influential individuals, such as Frederick Douglass, and by many lesser-known people, including ex-slaves and former soldiers in the war, whose voices are important in understanding Reconstruction and its fate.

The volume consists of four main sections. The first section covers the period of Presidential Reconstruction from 1865 -1866. It shows the competing perspectives in the period after the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination of how the defeated South should be Reconstructed and of how the government should treat the former slaves, freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. This section of the book includes many voices while focusing on President Andrew Johnson who advocated a lenient treatment of the South and who had heavily racist attitudes towards the Freedpeople. Johnson was impeached but acquitted by the Senate. The selections in this book offer many insights into events of Presidential Reconstruction.

The second section of the book covers Congressional Reconstruction from 1866 -- 1869 when Congress opted to take a different approach from Johnson and came in conflict with him. The materials in this section cover the 14th and 15th Amendments and Congress' attempts to take an aggressive role, using the military, in Reconstruction the governments of the Southern states to give American Americans the right to vote and to participate fully in state affairs. Attempts at land redistribution advocated by some had been set aside as politically impracticable and as outside the scope of American commitment to individual rights. There are many fascinating entries in this portion of the book showing the rise of Congressional Reconstruction and different contemporary reactions to it. Several entries show the rise of the Klan and other white supremacist organizations which used terror and violence to defeat Reconstruction. The entries include discussions of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Among the many entries I learned from were the New York Times article "An Hour with General Grant", May 24, 1866, and Albion Tourgee's "To the Voters of Guilford" of October 21, 1867.

The third section of the book, "Let us have Peace" covers the first term of President Grant from 1869 -- 1873. Grant's presidency too has been reassessed in recent years, and he is shown as working both to protect the rights of the Freedpeople and to bring the country together. The materials in this section cover the rising violence in the South resulting from the efforts to enfranchise the Freemen and Grant's efforts to combat the violence. The entries also show the rise in opposition to Grant by a combination of liberal Republicans and Democrats. The entries in this section include a debate between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony of May 12, 1869, on the relationship between the Women's Suffrage Movement and the movement for enfranchising African American men. This is one of the many entries in this section of the book that is challenging and worth knowing.

The final part of the book, "The End of Reconstruction" covers Grant's second term, 1873 -- 1877. It shows the rise of opposition in the Southern States to Presidential Reconstruction and the attempt to replace Reconstruction state governments with white-only governments, frequently involving the use of violence and terrorism. The entries show the many instances of violence against the Freedpeople and the governments during these years. The entries show how the North gradually lost the political will or ability to combat the violence successfully. As Grant wrote in a letter to his Attorney General of September 13, 1875, "the whole public are tired out". In an interview with LOA, Brooks Simpson was asked to identify one document out of the many in this book that he would commend to readers. Simpson pointed to Grant's Message to the Senate on Louisiana of January 13, 1875. This document identifies the chaos in many of the Southern States, the opposition to Reconstruction, the violence used to defeat Reconstruction, and the efforts Grant took, sometimes no sufficiently appreciated, to protect the rights of the Freedpeople.

The material in this book is complex and difficult and many be unfamiliar to many. Simpson helps the reader along with his introduction to the volume and with introductions to each section on the book. The book includes a chronology of the Reconstruction Era which provides a good overview, biographical entries, and notes all of which helps enhance the history and the accessibility of the volume.

Many excellent studies are available of the Reconstruction Era, but this book is an outstanding collection of source material. It is a gift to have these materials made accessible to a wide readership and to be preserved in a volume in a series devoted to the American experience. It is