The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (review)

188CIVIL war history pages in the entire volume.) The reader's attention is fixed instead upon the measures taken by the Pennsylvania authorities to resist invasion—the efforts of General Couch and Governor Curtin to raise and equip forces to meet the emergency, the planning and construction of the Harrisburg defenses, and the flow of militia, national guard and even the Invalid Corps to the threatened area. The story henceforth becomes a series of incidents involving all kinds of people caught up in this invasion and the impact of the invasion upon the inhabitants of Pennsylvania. In this context the battle of Gettysburg is only an epilogue. As a career officer and onetime chief of the Army's Historical Division in Europe, Colonel Nye is eminendy qualified to pass judgment on military decisions and actions at every level. He is clearly impressed with Stuart and advances some good arguments for the conduct of the Confederate cavalry commander in the Gettysburg campaign. He has some rather harsh comments on Stuart's counterpart, Pleasanton, which, on the basis of evidence presented in this book, would appear to be justified. He is able to reconstruct the thoughts of the chief actors and therefore to explain the basis for their actions, and the book does not exist that offers a more meticulous attempt to correlate what happened then with what remains on the ground today. With this book in hand, the reader should be able to locate the scene of every minor combat and even to identify many of the buildings and odier landmarks that still stand. Here it should be noted, however, that the author occasionally suffers from the defects of his qualities. He has a tendency at times to include superfluous detail ("McClure's residence was a large, three story building, painted white with a long porch, the roof of which was supported by arches and pillars. It was burned by McCausland in 1864. . . ."), and his familiarity with the region occasionally leads him into bypaths of greater interest to the local inhabitants than to the general reader. These are minor blemishes, however, and a matter of taste and interest rather than quality. Colonel Nye has written a very good book—one worthy of the subject as well as the attention of anyone still interested in the Civil War. Jay Luvaas Allegheny College The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877. By Kenneth M. Stampp. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Pp. ix, 228, iv. $4.95.) The traditional interpretation of the Reconstruction era was largely the work of William A. Dunning, his contemporaries, and his students. They charged that Thaddeus Stevens and his congressional co-laborers who formulated the Radical Reconstruction program were "fanatics more extreme than the southern fire-eaters who had precipitated the Civil War," that the Reconstruction legislation was the "most soul-sickening spectacle BOOK REVIEWS189 that Americans had ever been called upon to behold," and that the Reconstruction era was "a time of party abuse, of corruption, of vindictive bigotry," a "nadir of national disgrace." And Claude G. Bowers, who popularized this interpretation, disseminated more extreme views of "almost unrelieved sordidness in public and private life," of "crafty scheming northern carpetbaggers," of "depraved southern scalawags," and of "ignorant , barbarous, sensual Negroes who threatened to Africanize the South and destroy its Caucasian civilization." William E. B. DuBois as early as 1910 challenged this accepted interpretation and called attention to many benefits which Americans received from the Reconstruction program. Among them he emphasized free public education for poor whites and Negroes in the South, significant social and economic legislation, and a much broader base for political democracy throughout the nation. His was a voice crying in the wilderness, but in the 1940's Francis B. Simkins led a group of young historians who called for a restudy of Reconstruction and a revision of the Dunning School's interpretation. Since then many historians have been chipping away errors and faulty interpretations. Kenneth Stampp's book is the first general dissection of the Dunning thesis. Space permits reference to only a few of Stampp's significant contributions to the understanding of Reconstruction. While highly critical his account is well balanced and judicious. He recognizes...