Reconstruction: A Concise History

Reconstruction And Free Labor

Allen Guelzo's "Reconstruction: A Concise History" (2018) offers a brief yet thoughtful look at the twelve-year period following the Civil War, 1865 -- 1877, an era which Guelzo finds can "reasonably be characterized as the ugly duckling of American history." The Henry Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College, Guelzo has written extensively on Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation, the battle of Gettysburg and other subjects. I have learned a great deal from reading Guelzo, both historically and philosophically.

The Reconstruction Era has been written about widely from differing perspectives. Guelzo's book is intended only to offer a "brief introduction to the topic at hand" and to attempt "no more than to fashion a basic scaffolding for understanding Reconstruction." Guelzo succeeds admirably in this modest aim: his book offers readers an eloquent, informed basic understanding of Reconstruction which will encourage those interested to pursue the subject further. (The volume includes an excellent bibliography.) The book also will interest those readers with a background in the Civil War and Reconstruction because Guelzo offers his own interpretation of Reconstruction and its significance.

Guelzo understands Reconstruction as a free labor revolution without the taint of some Marxist interpretations. He understands "free labor" as "a shorthand term for liberal economic democracy" which stressed individual economic effort through what was still a society of small-scale manufacturing and industry with the possibility of upward mobility. The belief in free labor promoted several other virtues including "thrift, prudence, industry, religious faith, temperance, rationality, and nationalism". In his book on the Reconstruction Era in the Oxford History of the United States, "The Republic for which it Stands", Richard White offers a similar view of free labor and its importance following the Civil War. Guelzo, however, has more of a belief in the vitality and value of the movement than does White, who argues that the ideology of free labor was already obsolescent as a result of the industrialization following the Civil War.

For Guelzo, Reconstruction was an attempt to bring free labor to the defeated South. While noble in part, the effort failed because the South had a different economic value system based on the plantation, restricting land ownership to the few, and derogating the value of individual labor as compared to leisure and caste. The partial failure of Reconstruction was due in large part to its rejection by the South at least as much as it it was due to shortcomings in design and execution in the national government.

With this understanding of Reconstruction, Guelzo guides the reader through the leading events and figures of the Era. He discusses President Johnson's efforts at presidential Reconstruction which in many respects set the stage for what followed by returning most large landholdings in the South to their former owners. He discusses how the Radical Republicans in Congress took control over the Reconstruction process and impeached Johnson. Guelzo discusses Reconstruction under President Grant, whom Guelzo finds well-meaning towards the Freedpeople but a weak political leader. He discusses the violence in the South which relatively quickly overturned the reconstructed governments established under congressional reconstruction. His account discusses in some detail the effect Supreme Court rulings, culminating in Plessy v. Ferguson had in undermining Reconstruction. Guelzo also is insightful in drawing parallels between Reconstruction in the South and the ongoing settlement in the West. He discusses as well how government corruption and financial panic assisted in the rebirth of the Democratic Party and worked to limit the impact of Reconstruction.

In the concluding chapter of the book, Guelzo offers a thoughtful summary both of the successes of Reconstruction, which are greater than sometimes supposed, and of its failures. The United States and its federalist system of government survived without a further civil war. The losers in the process were southern African Americans who remained in poverty and in a state of near-peonage. The large failure of Reconstruction still remains with the United States.

Guelzo writes lucidly and with a sense of the ambiguities and difficulties of history. This short book is filled with measured reflection and understanding. For those reading only one book on the Era, Guelzo's study will offer material for thought. Those interested in reading further might want to explore the Library of America's recent volume "Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality" edited by Brooks Simpson which offers a substantial collection of source material from the Era.

Robin Friedman