The Reconstruction of the Nation (review)

book reviews279 when I can get diem . . . They taste very much like a young squirrel and would be good enough if caUed by any odier name." Yankee Rebel speaks for itself as a fine book, and in many, many more passages than diese quoted. It remains to add diat the book is equaUy fortunate in Professor Barrett's exceUent notes and feUcitous introduction and in Edmund Brooks Patterson's sketch of his grandfadier. Bowdoin CoUege Richard Harwell The Reconstruction of the Nation. By Rembert W. Patrick. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Pp. xi, 324. $7.50.) Rembert W. Patrick's The Reconstruction of the Nation is an important addition to die growing list of modern accounts of the period foUowing Appomattox. EssentiaUy a synthesis of the latest scholarship in the field, this book, Uke its prototype, David Donald's excellent revision of J. G. RandaU's The Civil War and Reconstruction, is more than a text. Incorporating stimulating interpretations of the faüure of efforts to remake the South, it raises chaUenging questions and deserves to be read on its own account. Professor Patrick focuses his attention on racial prejudice. According to his findings, bigotry and the unwülingness to grant equal rights to Negroes were the major forces working against the success of northern efforts to reconstruct the former Confederate States. And this prejudice was aUpervading . Turned into a weapon against honest radicals and effective governments as weU as against corruptionists and incompetents, it was the rock upon which congressional poUcies foundered. "Despite their confusing verbiage, the principal objections of conservative white Southerners to Congressional Reconstruction were enfranchisement of the Negro and federal protection of the freedmen," writes the author, and judging by the evidence he cites, he may weU be right. It would be a mistake to concentrate merely upon Professor Patrick's treatment of the South during reconstruction. As the title makes clear, the author deUberately sets out to encompass the rebmlding of the entire nation, and in a chapter entided, "The People," he attempts to do justice to social and economic developments throughout the United States during the last third of the nineteenth century. If, as he himself recognizes, this chapter detracts somewhat from the unity of the theme, it nevertheless fuUilb an important function by rounding out his account. Perhaps the most stimulating part of this book is the portion concerned with the final period of reconstruction—"that phase which ended in Southerners ' winning a portion of the peace." While the author does not make clear his distinction between this stage and the traditional period of "redemption ," by extending the scope of his investigation to the year 1900, he has succeeded in presenting an arresting view of the "New South." Again emphasizing his theme of racial animosity, he draws a picture of the abandonment of the freedmen by northern intellectuals, RepubUcan poüticians, and Federal judges. The result was the Negro's complete subjection to a caste system only more rigid in the South than in the North. The total degradation of die colored race through segregation, disfranchisement , the convict-leasing system, fine-payment arrangements, peonage, and lynchings were the underpinnings of a social order praised by bigoted writers and defended by venal poUticians. These examples of racial abuse tend to substantiate the author's thesis not only for the immediate period under discussion, but also for the preceding era. The skillful use of biographies, monographs, and articles concerning reconstruction adds to the value of Professor Patrick's contribution. Not since David Donald's volume appeared six years ago has anything luce this been attempted, and scholars wül be grateful to the author for providing them with so useful a bibUography. In dealing with his theme, Professor Patrick tends to be in accord with present day revisionist interpretations. Readüy admitting the short-comings of the reconstruction regimes—there were corruptionists among the RepubUcans as weU as among the Democrats—he nevertheless gives the radical governments credit for positive accomplishments. Thus he emphasizes their strong points—the constitutional improvements, the concern for eleemosynary institutions, and the attempt to give the South a viable pubUc school system. Although he skillfuUy weaves financial and industrial...