In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOOK REVIEWS75 Reconstruction as handled in all the former Confederacy, not just in Mississippi, was too lenient, even for the South's own good. As Professor Harris points out in his conclusion, former Confederates's "approach to Congressional Reconstruction would have been more realistic had there been no Presidential Reconstruction and had Negro suffrage been imposed upon the state immediately after the war when they were prepared for the worst at the hands of the victors." ( 248) There is the sort of validity about this observation which tempts one to draw the historical parallel that it would have been better for Mississippi and aU the South had the Federal executive , legislature, and judiciary moved with dispatch to implement the decision of the United States Supreme Court handed down on May 17, 1954, instead of allowing the separate states to proceed with "aU deliberate speed" to abolish segregation in the public schools—speed which was so "deliberate" that ten years later the nation found it necessary to enact the Civü Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps such parallels should not be drawn in a scholarly review, but then it may still be possible to learn something from the mistakes of the past. If so, white southerners should be in the fore among those seeking to learn from that burden which they bear called history. Charles E. Wynes University of Georgia Blueprint for Modern America. Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. By Leonard P. Curry. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. Pp. ix, 302. $8.50.) This book deserves a cordial reception. The need is undoubted. Notwithstanding the plethora of books about the Civil War, the nonmilitary legislation of the Civü War Congress has not been systematically studied. In contrast with the 1850's and the era of Reconstruction, the politics of the war years remain a largely neglected theme. Historians have lavished attention on Lincoln, battles, generals, Radicals, and Copperheads, but have stinted on the wartime history of Congress and the major parties. Much research is in progress, and portions of it have appeared in the pages of this journal. Indeed, readers have enjoyed a foretaste of the present work in Professor Curry's "Congressional Democrats, 1861-1863," which was published in the September, 1963, issue. Curry's research has been far-ranging and laborious. His bibliography runs to thirty pages and lists the principal relevant manuscript coUections of the country. He has, of course, toüed through the Congressional Globe and other government publications, newspapers, periodicals, books, and articles. And to this study he has brought an expertness in parliamentary procedure. In an orderly manner he has divided his book into eleven segments that begin with his analysis of issues and alignments in the first CivU War Congress and end with a statement that gives the work its title. The central portion is the chapters on slavery, confiscation, public improvements, transportation, taxation, currency, and a movement toward congressional dominance of the executive branch. Some special emphases warrant attention. The defeat of stringent confiscation legislation Curry interprets as revealing a Republican distinction between slave and personal property—the one moral, the other economic and legal—that ominously forbode assuring the sanctity of corporate property after the war. He holds that in disposing of the public lands Congress discarded the concept of benefiting the entire population for one of benefiting a smaU but powerful group of individuals. Taxation was probably the most troublesome issue; and here, as in the field of public land disposal, Congress adopted a blueprint for the "GUded Age"—a tax structure congenial to vested economic interests. Currency policy, he contends, was not "merely the by-product of the frantic search for revenue," but "often primarily motivated by a desire to reform the currency of the nation." (206). FinaUy, the Thirty- 76CIVIL WAR HISTORY seventh Congress, both directly and by flank assault, attacked the presidency, with the aim of making the legislative branch "the dominant force in the federal government structure." (242). AU this legislative endeavor, from first to last, Curry insists , drew the blueprint for modern America. Deeply researched, lucidly organized, and weU-written, the book becomes at once indispensable on its subject. But it has serious shortcomings...

pdf

Share