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BOOK REVIEWS281 pacified vengeful Minnesotans by permitting removal of the Sioux and even the innocent Winnebagos from the state, he doomed the tribes to destitution in Dakota Territory. Nichols closes by assessing Lincoln as a man who exerted minimal direct influence on Indian affairs during his presidency. His genuine sympathies for them never altered his priorities, the foremost being prosecution of the Civil War. Consequently, "The condition of the Indians, congressional actions, and continued corruption all support the conclusion that the Lincoln administration implemented little significant change in the Indian System" (p. 208) . Despite the failure of reform, the early 1860s was a critical period in Indian-white relations, and Lincoln and the Indians adds to our understanding of why it was so devastating for Native Americans. Nichols' research in relevant records of the Indian Office, War Department and several state historical collections is thorough. The volume contains little which is factually new; the contribution comes from its tight focus on Lincoln and his immediate subordinates rather than on the Indians and federal field agents. In a broader context this clearly-written study throws light on why federal Indian removal and coercive assimilation policies lasted so long. It was not just the lucrative patronage of the Indian System and westward surging pioneers which thwarted nineteenth-century reformers. Nichols demonstrates how difficult it was to break the strong "chain of ideas" which bound Indians in the minds of United States citizens as "a static, uncivilized impediment to the progress of civilization" (p. 196). Nor was Lincoln's low priority for Indian matters unique to the Civil War years. Unhappily, a century later it still helps to explain their position in American society. Edmund J. Danziger Bowling Green State University Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction. By Thomas Holt. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Pp. 269. $12.50.) In this volume Thomas Holt discredits many of the myths which have continued to distort South Carolina's Reconstruction history. For example , while historian Eric McKitrick in his Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction describes post-Reconstruction governor Wade Hampton as a "legendary and heroic figure," and Joel Williamson in his widelyacclaimed 1965 publication, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, refers to him as a man of "inflexible rectitude" and "sober courage," Holt portrays Hampton more accurately as a paternalistic racist committed to the maintenance of white supremacy. Holt also challenges Williamson's conclusion that Reconstruction represented for South Carolina's blacks "a period of unequaled progress," perceiving that this so-called economic progress reflected the imple- 282CIVIL WAR HISTORY mentation of agricultural peonage for blacks within the state. Rejecting, too, W. E. B. DuBois's comment that a measure of glory accompanied the end of the black effort to restructure Southern society, Holt instead accentuates the depth of the failure of Reconstruction in South Carolina. Indeed, the most important contribution of Holt's book is that it demonstrates the shallow commitment with which most black leaders approached meaningful reform in South Carolina. As Holt illustrates consistently throughout his work, sharp strains of elitism characterized by bourgeois attitudes among blacks themselves undermined from the beginning the efforts ofmore radical blacks to bring freedom and justice to South Carolina. Ultimately, of course, millions of recently freed slaves suffered the consequences of the black leadership's inability to transcend the limitations of capitalism and class. For example, the efforts of black radicals in the legislature to strengthen the militia succumbed to the fears of numerous black legislators who, ignoring the record of white hostility toward blacks, claimed that the bill would endanger the financial credit of the state. Of greater consequence was the black leadership's reluctance to address critically pressing questions of economic and land reform, resulting in continued exploitation and oppression of black laborers. Black opposition to proposed labor legislation, for example, focused on the need to preserve so-called free enterprise, and a strong pro-labor measure introduced by former slave James Henderson failed even to obtain the support of blacks on the labor committee. It was in his attempt to account for what he called "the unexpected failure" of the black Republican legislators to advance...

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