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178CIVIL WAR HISTORY sis directed at the Southern Cheyennes and Santee Sioux. Yet the organization of any book on a complicated topic is essentially arbitrary, and in any case nothing of substance is gained by complaining how a book would have been executed—certainly not if it has the quality that this one obviously does. Those who repeatedly charge that the Indian Office with all its personnel should have been able to temper the Indians' regrettable fate, at least to some degree, are advised to study this book carefully, and to consider Danziger's main thesis. In his view the OIA's field hands were expected to play a dual role: 1) to facilitate with dispatch the unfettered expansion of America's white population, and 2) promote the Indians ' welfare and "civilization." The former was primary but cleverly unofficial; the latter secondary and wholly official. The conflict between the two precluded the superintendents and agents from looking much better than a group of bungling bureaucrats. This is analysis of the highest order, and the field of American Indian history desperately needs more of it. William E. Unrau Wichita State University A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction , 1863-1869. By Michael Les Benedict. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974. Pp. 493. $18.95.) "As this book goes to press," Michael Les Benedict writes, "historians are becoming more and more aware that 'Radical Reconstruction' was not very radical after all" (p. 13). Benedict has undertaken to make them even more aware of it. He aims to distinguish among "radicals, centrists, and conservatives" within the Republican party and to show the disproportionate influence of the centrists and the conservatives. The radicals, he finds, united on Reconstruction issues, on black suffrage in particular, and not on economic issues. In the course of his arguments he brings to bear a tremendous quantity and variety of both primary and secondary sources. He also uses some statistical analysis, to corroborate his conventional evidence. David Donald, he remarks, "used a somewhat unrefined statistical method to determine his groups, so his characterizations and mine do not always agree" (p. 56). If Benedict comes to no very novel conclusions, he nevertheless presents a remarkably thorough and detailed account of the role of congressional Republicans in regard to Reconstruction politics and policy from 1863 to 1869. His is, indeed, an impressive achievement, a work of prodigious scholarship. That having been said, some doubts and cautions are in order. Several of Benedict's statements are either dubious or erroneous. It is not exactly correct, for example, to say that President Lincoln in an- BOOK REVIEWS179 nouncing his ten-percent plan in 1863 committed himself to "accepting only state governments 'not inconsistent' with oaths recognizing the abolition of slavery" (p. 71). It is not at all certain that Lincoln in April 1865 "did not intend to recognize the rebel legislature" of Virginia (p. 98) . It is not true that "all but three of the unreconstructed states" had been restored to "normal relations with the Union" by 1868 or even by 1869 (pp. 315, 335). Thaddeus Stevens' letter to Charles Sumner (p. 160), accurately deciphered, reads "by our friends," not "by accident" (Stevens' handwriting is a code that Benedict has not quite cracked). Such errors are merely incidental. More serious are questions about the categories that Benedict imposes. For one thing, he makes a distinction between "political" and "legislative" radicals, a distinction impossible to sustain and one that confuses more than it clarifies. For another thing, he defines "radical" in such a way that the term does not fit all those to whom he applies it. "During the summer and fall of 1865 differences between radicals and nonradicals were sharply delineated," he maintains (p. 23). "The radicals insisted on the incorporation of black suffrage in any plan of Reconstruction. . . ." And he refers to Stevens as outstanding among the "consistent radicals" (pp. 26-27). The obvious fact, however, is that at that time Stevens did not insist on black suffrage. Was he, then, really a "centrist" or a "conservative" during that period? Or was he only acting as a "political" instead of a "legislative" radical? Perhaps the categorizing of Reconstruction congressmen...

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