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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 ideas, capital, and immigrants as long as white domination was not threatened. But prewar Virginians, too, had welcomed northern immigration and economic projects until white domination (i.e., Negro slavery) was threatened . Maddex perhaps overestimates the power and importance of General Mahone and his railroads in the "redemption" of Virginia. Events probably would have been about the same even without the little general's machinations. Finally, the advertising for this book claims that "unlike other Southern Conservatives," those in Virginia were committed to integrating their state into the capitalistic system of the North. Nowhere is this comparative point fully developed or documented. Nevertheless, this is a fine monograph with a well-argued thesis, truly impressive research, and clear prose. Indeed, it will doubtless become a standard work in the field and is a worthy model for studies of the Redeemers in other southern states. Richard Lowe North Texas State University North of Reconstruction: Ohio Politics, 1865-1870. By Felice A. Bonadio. (New York: New York University Press, 1970. Pp. xi, 204. $8.95.) Despite its sweeping title, this study deals mainly with the Republican 88CIVIL WAR HISTORY party in Ohio during a rather arbitrarily restricted time span. Professor Bonadio contends that, in Ohio at least, Republicans were motivated less by considerations of ideology than by bitter factional infighting. Their organization was actually an "imaginary party," a loosely-amalgamated confederation of former Democrats, former Whigs, War Democrats and new Republicans which continually tended to split apart along its poorly-joined seams. This is a promising thesis but its elaboration is so muddled as to discredit any conclusions which may stem from it. Among the "new" Republicans , the author includes Robert Schenk, who was bom in 1809 and whose congressional career began in 1843. Among the founders of the Ohio Republican party, Bonadio lists William Dean Howells, Whitelaw Reid and Edwin Stanton. The first two were eighteen years old in 1855, while Stanton was a pro-Buchanan Pennsylvania Democrat at the time. As blunder follows blunder, serious doubts begin to arise as to the caliber of the workmanship involved. A close inspection of the footnotes does nothing to dispel these doubts. Neither the author nor the editor seems to understand the meaning of ibid., and the footnote style is a hodgepodge. Still, an impressive array of out-of-the-way sources is cited, which seems to lend an air of authority to the work. This is an illusion. To take a specific example, on page 114, a Garfield letter is quoted. It is not merely that in the footnote no library is indicated for this letter and that the collection cited...

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