Toward a New South? Studies in Post-Civil War Communities (review)

84CIVIL WAR HISTORY that dominance diminished with the passage of the first Reconstruction Act. After 1867, Democrats along the Pacific coast were more successful and the conservative philosophy also became more popular elsewhere in the West and in America as a whole. Conservatism grew in favor because of westerners' disillusionment with politicians, political factionalism , badly framed Reconstruction legislation, the dearth of bills dealing with specific western problems, and a general and growing disenchantment with the very idea of reform. With conservatism on the rise, western voters became less concerned about Reconstruction and more interested in local problems. This book is very well written and relies heavily upon large amounts of original source material, especially manuscript collections and other private sources, newspapers, and public documents. Considering the large number of disparate areas and subjects Berwanger had to juggle, it is also extremely well-organized. Moreover, his generalizations are both plentiful and useful. There are a few minor problems with evidence in this book. Berwanger indicates that the 1870 Census shows fewer Confederates in the West than is indicated in private and official papers. Why? The author suggests that the discrepancy was the result of the Republican tendency to overestimate the number of individuals with pro-Confederate leanings . He also says that many Southerners left the chaos of the South in the early 1860s and returned after 1868 when things had calmed down; this movement would not have been reflected in the 1870 population statistics . However, another possibility, which is not treated, is that the 1870 Census was inaccurate; if this is true, then other information he draws from the Ninth Census, such as the number of blacks and Chinese in the West, may also be fallacious. Again, when the author explains the results of referenda on black suffrage in Minnesota and Kansas, he admits that his conclusions may be inaccurate, because he uses demographic statistics from 1870 and not from the years when the referenda were held. A few tantalizing questions are left unanswered, although they fall beyond the chronological scope of this study. In the 1880s, Nevada and Kansas deleted racial restrictions from their voting laws. Why? Was western interest in Reconstruction revived between 1870 and 1876? If so, to what degree? Perhaps Professor Berwanger will provide us with a study answering these questions. If he does, and if it is of the same quality as this book, we will all be grateful again. Gerald W. Wolff University of South Dakota Toward a New South? Studies in Post-Civil War Communities. Edited by Orville Vernon Burton and Robert C. McMath, Jr. (Westport, Connecticut : Greenwood Press, 1982. Pp. xx, 319. $29.95.) One of two volumes of community studies to emerge from a 1978 NEHfunded conference at the Newberry Library, Toward a New South? BOOK REVIEWS85 consists of an introduction, ten substantive essays, and a concluding statement by McMath that provides a survey of some of the theoretical views of "community" and suggests the applicability of certain of these to the exploration of southern communities. In keeping with current trends in community studies, more than half of these papers employ some measure of quantification and a number attempt to apply or test a variety of sociological and anthropological theories or interpretative generalizations. As the editors point out, "very few of the essays actually examine communities organically or holistically" (p. xvii). They might have said "none," for only that of Tom E. Terrill—"Murder at Graniteville"—even comes close. (Terrill's contribution, incidentially, is more useful than its misleading title would suggest; the murder of James Gregg serves only as an organizing center for an examination of this southern factory town.) Thus, these pieces generally constitute studies "within alocal setting " rather than studies of a community or of the concept of community . This comment serves to highlight a continuing problem with "community history," that is dealt with, in part, by the editors in their preface and by McMath in his concluding essay. Our conceptualization of "community" remains so amorphous in regard to both boundaries and structure as to make Turner's "frontier" appear precise and crystal-clear by comparison. It appears to me that we must overcome our disdain for "local" history...