Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi (review)

74CIVIL WAR HISTORY As popular history, Black Power U.S.A. probably reveals as much or more about the thinking of black power advocates today than about the extent of black power during Reconstruction. Bennett's purpose is explicitly didactive. Quoting Santayana 's dictum that men who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, he narrates "the triumphs and failures of this first Reconstruction" as a means of understanding "the second Reconstruction we are now undergoing." The lesson is not an encouraging one. Reconstruction faded. One reason was the lack of land reform , the failure "to ground political freedom on economic freedom." Another was the tenuous position of the Negroes, "situated ... in a no-man's land with uncertain friends on one side and certain enemies on the other." The Negroes had no choice but to ally themselves with whites, but the price they paid was "fatal concessions on radical reform." In addition, Bennett faults "many black professionals" for being "prisoners of unrealistic white middle-class ideals." In Bennett's view, they faded to see that Reconstruction was a revolution requiring the immediate and thorough uprooting of "the tentacles of the old regime." They were too willing to compromise and conciliate. As drawn by Bennett, the first Reconstruction provides not only a lesson but a source of inspiration. For him, the first Reconstruction is the golden age, a time when blacks had power and used it to advance their own interests, "the first and . . . last real attempt to establish an interracial democracy in America." But Bennett does not consign his golden age to the past. "If it could happen once in Mississippi, it could happen again anywhere," he declares. The problem with this sort of statement lies in Bennett's having overestimated what in fact did happen in Mississippi and other southern states during Reconstruction. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of wishful thinking in this book. Anne C. Loveland Louisiana State University Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi. By William C. Harris. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Pp. x, 279. $8.00. ) It is not likely that another historian will soon want, or need, to again cover the ground which Professor Harris has so thoroughly covered in this work. As far as any written history can be "definitive," this volume is in that category, covering such topics as: the standard "aftermath of war" and "travafl of freedom," politics, the Black Codes, agriculture, raüroads, levee construction, commerce, and industry , all for a two-year period only, of course. And whüe it wül take no awards for sprightliness of style, historians of Reconstruction, and historians of Mississippi Reconstruction in particular, will be referring to Professor Harris's work for a long time to come. Since in certain quarters it may still be necessary to buttress further the work of the latest generation of revisionists of the history of Reconstruction, because a thin gray Une of professional and non-professional historians do still man the battlements of the least sophisticated versions of the Dunning school, readers should note that in Mississippi between 1865 and 1867: secessionists were discredited and the stock of the Whigs was high; most Negroes did accept the responsibility for having to go to work; and most "Carpetbaggers," instead of being bent upon political opportunism and the chance politics might afford for economic gain, were seeking only good farm land and the chance to be successful planters and farmers. Also, there were realistic native whites, like C. B. Manlove, editor of the Vicksburg Journal and a former Confederate officer, who counseled his fellow citizens: "The negro of Mississippi has to be protected by the laws of Mississippi or by Federal bayonets." Ultimately, of course, that is exactly what happened, in the form of Congressional Reconstruction. Clearly, to all but that thin gray line of historians referred to above, Presidential BOOK REVIEWS75 Reconstruction as handled in all the former Confederacy, not just in Mississippi, was too lenient, even for the South's own good. As Professor Harris points out in his conclusion, former Confederates's "approach to Congressional Reconstruction would have been more realistic had there been no Presidential Reconstruction and had Negro suffrage...