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86CIVIL WAR HISTORY ritualist candidates, the behavior of Norwegian Lutherans, and the subtle substitution of direction for majority lead this reviewer to conclude that the distinction between ritualism and pietism is of little use in explaining voting behavior in 1896 in at least one of his three states. He has, despite his protests, substituted religious for economic determinism . KIeppner makes a crucial assumption that derived from his religious determinism. He assumes that shrewd politicians (like McKinley) could gather more votes by stressing less divisive economic issues instead of the religious issues which divided voters on a deeper level. While he shows that particular classes (poor farmers, workers, etc.) did not vote decisively for a particular party, this docs not mean that economic issues were less divisive than religious ones. Wyman's conclusions about Norwegians in 1890 and German Protestants in 1896 suggest that economic issues could divide as bitterly as religious ones. Further, it is a very narrow definition of economic issues that would focus alone on the votes of such producer blocs as farmers or workers. The 1900 Milwaukee election, which became a referendum on a streetcar franchise grab, illustrates the potency of a very different kind of economic issue. Only eight of the twenty-five aldermen who had supported the company were re-elected, while fifteen of the seventeen who had opposed the company were returned; and the result was the same in native pietist, Polish Catholic and German Lutheran wards. The MiIwaukeeans who rejected the company were reacting to their economic roles as consumers, streetcar patrons, and taxpayers. Kleppner's assumption that economic issues were less divisive than cultural ones requires more detailed investigation. It is unfortunate for those who have wanted to make such detailed investigations that KIeppner had for a time exclusive use of some of his sources. While this book is an important and provocative one, the author's assumptions and lack of explicit documentation call out for further investigation . David P. Thf.len University of Missouri The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1879: A Study in Reconstruction Politics . By Jack P. Maddex, Jr. (University of North Carolina Press, 1970. Pp. xx, 328. $8.50.) Virginia has been well served by historians, particularly in the last decade when scholarly journals and publishing houses have produced a small flood of monographs on the Old Dominion. Some of the best of these works have examined the half-century after the Civil War, and this study of the Conservative party is a valuable addition to the list. Maddex begins with a brief sketch of antebellum Virginia, stresses the revolutionizing effects of the war, devotes three chapters to Rccon- BOOK REVIEWS87 struction, and traces the history of the Conservative party from its organization in 1867 to its disintegration under the hammer blows of financial crisis in 1879. The author investigates everything from the state's crushing debt problem to the clash between sheep raisers and dog lovers. Maddex lines up with C. Vann Woodward, Barrington Moore, and Charles Beard in seeing the Civil War as a revolution. The antebellum leadership class, he writes, gave way to ex-Whigs and young Confederate veterans who were determined to integrate Virginia into the dominant national framework of industrial capitalism, nationalism, practical politics, and race relations marked by official freedom for blacks but control of government and society by whites. The major impetus behind this startling change was the war itself: the Confederacy's defeat by a highly organized, more centralized, industrial North was a lesson Virginia's postwar leaders did not forget. Moreover, by winning the war the North was able partially to reshape the laws and institutions of the Old Dominion through the process of Reconstruction. A Republican -dominated constitutional convention established a public school system, replaced ancient local-government institutions with more modern ones, shifted the tax burden away from the commercial classes, and wrote laissez faire economic ideas into the basic law. The Conservatives , adapting to the times, accepted and implemented these farreaching reforms. Although he ably demonstrates a significant difference between antebellum and postbellum Virginia, Maddex draws a sharper distinction between them than probably existed. To cite only one example, he stresses postwar Virginia's eagerness to import northern...

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