A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution (review)

BOOK REVIEWS A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. By Harold M. Hyman. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1973. Pp. xx, 562, xvii. $15.00.) It is impossible in a short review to convey the scope and complexity of this book and the immensity of the research involved. But certain underlying themes are evident. In his introduction the author says that he has tried to understand what the Constitution meant to contemporaries . Whereas earlier scholars have been concerned primarily with the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution, Hyman has attempted to understand and evaluate the effects of contemporary understanding of the Constitution on the war and Reconstruction . As he says, "the quarrels of a century ago not only shaped the Constitution, the Constitution shaped the quarrels" (p. xvii). He quotes with approbation William R. Brock's statement that the Civil War began as war to preserve the Union, but "for the majority in the North it had become a war to create a more perfect Union" (p. xx). Throughout the book opposing contemporary views are presented —the static view of the Constitution held by most Democrats and the more dynamic (and more realistic) view of Republicans. But it is also emphasized that in determining policies Republicans were governed by their perceptions of constitutional limitations. Throughout the war and Reconstruction Republicans were committed to constitutionalism. One view of the Constitution was represented by Chief Justice Taney, who was "one of the many men in 1861 and later who saw no alternative between the helpless acquiescence in the secession of the South and the inevitable rise of a military dictatorship in the North, if the government tried to restore the cleft Union of states by force" (p. 81). The other point of view was epitomized by Lincoln, who was both a nationalist and a constitutionalist and who equated free government with constitutional government. Lincoln found and used constitutional resources that the nation did not know it had and "took the initiative that they had held for forty years out of the hands of champions of constitutional limitations on national action" (p. 63). Lincoln's conduct of the war refuted critics who believed that federalism and democracy could not cope with crises. Hyman demonstrates that Reconstruction really began almost immediately after Sumter, as soon as Union armies occupied seceded territory. The army experience was "an essential source of emancipation 364 and Reconstruction politics" (p. 164). The military governorships became "laboratories" for various patterns of state restoration. In developing Reconstruction policies, except for its insistence on the repudiation of secession and slavery, Congress sought a continuum rather than a break with the past. The Republicans who were the chief architects of Reconstruction policy were "constrained conformists" who wanted to return the nation and states to pre-war arrangements so far as was practical. No "centralized leviathan" resulted from the war though there was a decrease in state autonomy. After Appomattox there was increased attention to intrastate matters and a proliferation of efforts to apply state and local powers to the solving of a variety of problems. This leads Hyman into the exploration of a number of fields that have little te do with the traditional issues of Reconstruction. These include such diverse subjects as state and city efforts in public health, licensing of professionals, and dealing with railroads. There were parallel concerns at the national level. According to Hyman, "Non-Reconstruction imperatives shaped Reconstruction more—far more—than Reconstruction molded other matters" (p. 415). Hyman also breaks with tradition and follows the lead of Stanley Kutler in his treatment of the relations of Republicans and the federal judiciary. Instead of assaulting, the Republicans enhanced the federal judiciary. As a part of the nationalism engendered by the war (which resulted in part from the obstructions to the war effort by state courts) a pattern of increasing dependence on and employment of federal courts emerged. The 1863 habeas-corpus-indemnity-removal law was one of several significant steps taken by Congress between 1863 and 1875 which led to a vast increase in federal jurisdiction. In fact, Hyman believes that a basic error of Congress...