The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865-1879 (review)

328civil war histoby historical societies. In this regard Andrew RoUe reiterates ad nauseam the nostalgia of the proud Confederates, their humiliation and despair in defeat, and their loathing for the new South of the early Reconstruction period. Nevertheless, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico is a solid history of the last phases of the Civil War in the South. Professor Rolle's work also offers Mexican historians an interesting and descriptive account of imperial Mexico under Maximilian. Robert L. Gold Southern Illinois University The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance , 1865-1879. By Irwin Unger. (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1964. Pp. 467. $10.00.) The Greenback Era is conceived as a great deal more than merely a study of a phase of American financial history. The financial conflict, according to Unger, sheds light on the "locus of control" of political power in the decade after the Civil War, and he is largely concerned with the "decision making process" in American society. The work is admirable in its conception. It recognizes that in order to understand the complexities of American politics one wfll have to disregard many of the traditional categories, that the framework of all kinds of particular issues—many of them on the surface non-political—wül have to be broadened and one wfll have to ask what it all means when placed on the larger political canvas. Surely this is a recognition the social analyst wfll have to applaud, and he wfll also applaud the question that Unger has asked about the place of this debate in the distribution of political power in the postwar decade. Unfortunately for the reviewer prepared to like any work that aims at a land of social-science comprehensiveness, the answer does not emerge so clearly as one would have hoped from the clarity of the question; and the text of the book does not live up to the exciting promise of the introduction . Unger's distinctions among the degrees of "soft money" and "hard money" advocacy is certainly an improvement on the usual sharp (and false) dichotomies. His recognition that irrational ideological commitments are often as important as simple calculations of "interests" is no doubt true, although it could hardly come as a surprise to any but the most shallow observer of human behavior. His frequent suggestions that some groups— the ironmasters, for example—shifted their viewpoints on the money question , could have been illuminating if reafly pursued. But the work is entirely traditional in nature, and therefore disappointing . It is not that Unger has written a bad book—indeed, as traditional political analysis, it is excellent. There are the usual elaborate accounts of congressional debates, a multitude of quotations from business, agricultural , industrial, and labor publications, and a great deal of interesting, if largely problematic, speculation about what all this rhetoric might really mean. But there is no election analysis to speak of, apparently be- book reviews329 cause the complexities of human behavior "defy quantifying." The little that was easily accessible enough to find its way into the work is either not taken far enough to be meaningful or buried in footnotes, almost as afterthoughts (e.g., page 198 and notes, page 319 and notes). The author brushes aside the complexities of the "slippery question" of role, which he notes is one of the most difficult for the social investigator to deal with, by making the usual dangerous assumption that the agricultural press and "generally recognized farm leaders" came close to voicing the sentiments and aspirations of the dirt farmers of their area. Even more important he completely avoids the problem of how much of this rhetoric could be attributed to ignorance of conditions, false belief based upon misinformation or limited intellectual equipment or perhaps even upon a correct understanding of injuries suffered by one's group. He dismisses it all as so much "irrationalism," which, one gathers from Unger's study, was the central characteristic of the period. Unger, in short, despite a formidable body of research, in the end was unable to avoid the same kind of confusion of ideology with reality that he, in keeping with a current fashion...