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The Continuing Evolution of Reconstruction History Author(s): Eric Foner Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 4, No. 1, The Reconstruction Era (Winter, 1989), pp. 11-13 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162634 Accessed: 17-12-2017 04:30 UTC

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A SPECIAL SECTION

The Continuing Evolution of Reconstruction History

Eric Foner

In the past thirty years, no period of American history has seen a broadly accepted point of view so completely overturned as Reconstruction--the dramatic and controversial era that followed the Civil War. Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within American society, newly uncovered evidence, and changing definitions of history it self, have combined to transform our understanding of race relations, politics, and economic change dur ing Reconstruction.

Anyone who attended high school before 1960 learned that

Reconstruction was as era of unrelieved sordidness in Ameri can political and social life. Drawing on scholarly studies that originated in the work of

William Dunning, John W. Bur gess, and their students soon after the turn of the century, the "traditional" interpretation argued that when the Civil War ended, the white South ac cepted the reality of military defeat, stood ready to do justice to the emancipated slaves, and desired above all a quick r?int?gration into the fabric of national life. Before his death, Abraham Lincoln had em barked on a course of sectional reconciliation, and during Presiden tial Reconstruction (1865-1867) his successor, Andrew Johnson, at tempted to carry out Lincoln's

magnanimous policies. Johnson's efforts were opposed and eventually thwarted by the Radical Republi

cans in Congress. Motivated by an irrational hatred of Southern "reb els" and the desire to consolidate their party's national ascendancy, the Radicals in 1867 swept aside the Southern governments Johnson had established and fastened black suf frage upon the defeated South. There followed the period of Congres sional or Radical Reconstruction (1867-77), an era of corruption presided over by unscrupulous "carpetbaggers" from the North, unprincipled Southern white "scala

Anyone who attended high school before 1960 learned that Reconstruction was an era of unrelieved sordidness in Ameri

can political and social life.

wags," and ignorant blacks, unpre pared for freedom and incapable of properly exercising the political right Northerners had thrust upon them. After much needless suffering, the South's white community banded together to overthrow these govern

ments and restore "home rule" (a euphemism for white supremacy). All told, Reconstruction was the darkest page in the American saga.

During the 1920s and 1930s, new studies of Johnson's career and new investigations of the economic

wellsprings of Republican policy reinforced the prevailing disdain for Reconstruction. Johnson's new biographers portrayed him as a courageous defender of constitu tional liberty; his actions stood above reproach. Simultaneously, histori ans of the Progressive School, who viewed political ideologies as little more than masks for crass economic ends, further undermined the Radi cals' reputation by portraying them as agents of Northern capitalism, who cynically used the issue of

black rights to fasten economic Subordination upon the de feated South.

From the first appearance of the Dunning school, dissenting voices had been raised, ini tially by a handful of survivors of the Reconstruction era and the small fraternity of black historians. In 1935, the black activist and scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, published Black Re construction in America, a monumental study that por

trayed Reconstruction as an idealis tic effort to construct a democratic, interracial political order from the ashes of slavery, as well as a phase in a prolonged struggle between capital and labor for control of the South's economic resources. His book closed with an indictment of a profession whose writings had ig nored the testimony of the principle actor in the drama of Reconstruc tion--the emancipated slave--and sacrificed scholarly objectivity on the altar of racial bias. "One fact

Winter 1989 ti

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and one alone," Du Bois wrote, "explains the attitude of most recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot conceive of Negroes as men." Black Reconstruction anticipated the findings of modern scholarship, but at the time of its publication, it failed to influence prevailing views among academic historians, or the account of the era in school texts.

Despite its remarkable longevity and powerful hold on the imagina tion, the demise of the traditional interpretation was inevitable. Its fundamental underpinning was the conviction, to quote one member of the Dunning School, of "negro inca pacity." Once objective scholarship and modern experience rendered its racist assumptions untenable, fa miliar evidence read very differ ently, new questions suddenly came into prominence, and the entire edifice had to fall.

It required, however, not simply the evolution of scholarship but a profound change in the nation's politics and racial attitudes to deal the final blow to the Dunning School. If the traditional interpretation re flected, and helped to legitimize, the racial order of a society in which blacks were disenfranchised and sub jected to discrimination in every aspect of their lives, Reconstruction revisionism bore the mark of the modern civil rights movement. In the 1960s the revisionist wave broke over the field, destroying, in rapid succession, every assumption of the traditional viewpoint. First, schol ars presented a drastically revised account of national politics. New works portrayed Andrew Johnson as a stubborn, racist politician inca pable of responding to the unprece dented situation that confronted him as president, and acquitted the Radicals--reborn as idealistic re formers genuinely committed to black rights?of vindictive motives and the charge of being the stalking

horses of Northern capitalism. Moreover, Reconstruction legisla tion was shown to be not simply the product of a Radical cabal, but a program that enjoyed broad support both in Congress and the North at large.

Even more startling was the revised portrait of Republican rule

Persistent racism, these post-revi sionist scholars argued, had negated efforts to extend justice to blacks, and the failure to distribute land prevented the freedmen from achiev ing true autonomy and made their civil and political rights all but meaningless. In the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of scholars, black

Reconstruction was not merely a specific time period, but the beginning of an extended his torical process: the adjustment of American society to the end of slavery.

in the South. So ingrained was the old racist version of Reconstruction that it took an entire decade of scholarship to prove the essentially negative contentions that "Negro rule" was a myth and that Recon struction represented more than "the blackout of honest government." The establishment of public school systems, the granting of equal citi zenship to blacks, and the effort to revitalize the devastated Southern economy refuted the traditional description of the period as a "tragic era" of rampant misgovernment. Revisionists pointed out as well that corruption in the Reconstruction South paled before that of the Tweed Ring, Credit Mobilier scandal, and Whiskey Rings in the post-Civil War North. By the end of the 1960s, Reconstruction was seen as a time of extraordinary social and political progress for blacks. If the era was "tragic," it was because change did not go far enough, especially in the area of Southern land reform.

Even when Revisionism was at its height, however, its more opti

mistic findings were challenged, as influential historians portrayed change in the post-Civil War years as fundamentally "superficial."

and white, extended this skeptical view to virtually every aspect of the period. Recent studies of Recon struction politics and ideology have stressed the "conservatism" of Republican policymakers, even at the height of Radical influence, and the continued hold of racism and federalism despite the extension of citizenship rights to blacks and the advanced scope of national author ity. Studies of federal policy in the South portrayed the army and Freed men's Bureau as working hand in glove with former slaveowners to thwart the freedmen's aspirations and force them to return to planta tion labor. At the same time, investigations of Southern social history emphasized the survival of the old planter class and the conti nuities between the old South and the new. The post-revisionist inter pretation represented a striking departure from nearly all previous accounts of the period, for whatever their differences, traditional and revisionist historians at least agreed that Reconstruction was a time of radical change. Summing up a decade of writing, C. Vann Woodward observed in 1979 that historians now understood "how essentially non

12 Magazine of History

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revolutionary and conservative Reconstruction really was."

In emphasizing that Reconstruc tion was part of the ongoing evolu tion of Southern society rather than a passing phenomenon, the post revisionists made a salutary contri bution to the study of the period. The description of the Reconstruc tion as "conservative," however, did not seem altogether persuasive when one reflected that it took the nation fully a century to implement its most basic demands, while others are yet to be fulfilled. Nor did the theme of continuity yield a fully convincing portrait of an era that contemporaries all agreed was both turbulent and wrenching in its social and political change. Over a half century ago, Charles and Mary Beard coined the term "The Second Ameri can Revolution" to describe a trans fer in power, wrought by the Civil War, from the South's "planting ar istocracy" to "Northern capitalists and free farmers." And in the latest shift in interpretive premises, atten tion to changes in the relative power of social classes has again become a central concern of historical writ ing. Unlike the Beards, however, who all but ignored the black expe rience, modern scholars tend to view emancipation itself as among the most revolutionary aspects of the period.

The most recent effort to pro vide a coherent account of the Reconstruction era is my own Re construction: America's Unfinished Revolution, published in 1988, and with an abridged version, A Short History of Reconstruction, set to appear in 1990. Drawing upon the voluminous secondary literature that has appeared in the last thirty years, the book seems to provide a coher ent, comprehensive modern account of the period. Necessarily, it touches on a multitude of issues, but certain broad themes unified the narrative.

The first is the centrality of the black experience. Rather than the passive victims of the actions of others or simply a "problem" con fronting white society, blacks were active agents in the making of Re construction, whose quest for indi vidual and community autonomy did much to establish Reconstruc tion's political and economic agenda. Black participation in Southern public life after 1867 was the most radical development of the Reconstruction years. Other themes include transi tion from slave to free labor and the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations.

The book also seeks to place the Southern story within a national context, especially by stressing the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly expanded author ity and a new set of purposes, including an unprecedented com

mitment to the ideal of a national citizenship whose equal rights be longed to all Americans regardless of race. Originating in wartime exigencies, the activist state came to embody the reforming impulse deeply rooted in postwar politics. And Reconstruction produced enduring changes in the laws and Constitution that fundamentally altered federal state relations and redefined the meaning of American citizenship. Yet because it threatened traditions of local autonomy, produced politi cal corruption, and was so closely associated with the new rights of blacks, the rise of the state inspired powerful opposition, which, in turn, weakened support for Reconstruc tion. Finally, the study examines how changes in the North's economy and class structure affected Recon struction, and especially the retreat from the commitment to equality that accelerated during the 1870s.

My account of Reconstruction begins not in 1865, but with the

Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, to emphasize that Reconstruction was not merely a specific time pe riod, but the beginning of an ex tended historical process: the ad justment of American society to the end of slavery. The destruction of the central institution of antebellum Southern life permanently trans formed the war's character, and produced far-reaching conflicts and debates over the role former slaves and their descendants would play in American life and the meaning of the freedom they had acquired. These

were the questions on which Recon struction persistently turned.

They were also questions that confronted every society that abol ished slavery in the Western hemi sphere, from Cuba and Jamaica to Brazil. Indeed, it may well be that the future of Reconstruction studies lies in comparative analysis of the differences and similarities between various aftermaths of slavery. I made a brief beginning in this di rection in my Nothing But Freedom, published in 1983. But comparative study of the economic, political, and social consequences of emancipa tion remains in its infancy. As was true for the study of slavery, a compai ative approach to emancipa tion can broaden our perspective, introduce new questions and con cepts, and illuminate what was and was not unique in the American ex perience of Reconstruction.

Eric F oner is Professor of History at Columbia University in New York. He has written extensively on Recon struction and his latest book, Recon struction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 received man awards, among them the 1988 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 1989 O AH Avery O. Craven Award as the most original book on the Era of Reconstruction.

Winter 1988 13

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