New Frontiers of the American Reconstruction (review)

BOOK REVIEWS375 inherent in the concept of secession itself was the principle of noncooperation with the Confederate government as well as with one another. This fact has been ably demonstrated by the late Professor Frank Owsley in his States Rights and the Confederacy. If the Confederacy had any chance at all for survival, it would have to be the result of foreign intervention or the maximum cooperation of the various states of which it was composed . The very philosophical foundation upon which the Confederacy was based in effect precluded the latter possibility. Such governors as Zebulon Vance of North Carolina and Joseph Brown of Georgia were loyal to the Confederate regime. Indeed, any accusation of noncooperation Üiat may be made against them is the direct result of the fact Üiat they interpreted the states rights dogma too literally, and attempted to practice its tenets. This is not to say that the states rights dogma might not have been more effective and less harmful if the Confederate revolution could have been achieved without war. Much may be said for a political doctrine of particularism Üiat allows a maximum political autonomy. Certainly the maximum degree of contentment for minorities can be realized in Üiat manner. The problem with which the Confederate states were faced was the fact that the revolution was not allowed to be peaceful. In such a circumstance, the attempt to apply a particularistic political philosophy may well be fatal. Mrs. Ringold shows how the impact of problems created by the attempt at revolution and the war in which these states were involved for their very existence was met by the state legislatures of the seceded states. She limits her study to eleven of the Confederate states and does not trace the story of the legislatures of the Confederate regimes Üiat claimed to represent Kentucky and Missouri. Her study indicates how the eventual dissipation of morale demonstrated the failure of the experiment at a revolution based on states rights and secession. Only foreign intervention might have maintained the morale of the people as French intervention had saved the United States during the revolution against Great Britain. The absence of such intervention, under the circumstances, could but spell the doom of the Confederacy. J. MrLTON Henry Austin Peay State College New Frontiers of the American Reconstruction. Edited by Harold M. Hyman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966. Pp. x, 156. $4.95.) These eight essays oí varying quality were originally delivered during a "Reconstruction centennial" at the University of Illinois in 1965; the frontiers involved include both new interpretive emphases and suggestions for further research. The volume is useful and provocative, and the entire effort well warrants imitation elsewhere, with or without centennial inspiration . 376CIVIL WAR HISTORY At the cost of gross omission and oversimplification diis review will attempt a synopsis of each essay, the first of which is by the editor himself and concerns die constitutional crisis that secession created in die North. It is Mr. Hyman's main contention diat in response to frustrations imposed in die midst of war by a dien weakly conceived constitution, the North soon endorsed a new tiieory of "constitutional adequacy" diat served as stimulus and rationale for the expansion of Federal authority during and after die Civil War, The emphasis is primarily upon the war years, and unfortunately, if necessarily, die essay concludes before die important reconstruction implications are fully explored. In an exceptionally wellconceived and presented response, Alfred H. Kelly sees in these changing constitutional attitudes not so much newness as a return to older Hamiltonian nationalism. While diere is substantial agreement between these two theses, Kelly emphasizes die importance of his distinction in explaining the predominance of a conservative rather tiian a revolutionary philosophy of war and reconstruction. Unlike some other detectors of a minimal revolutionary stream in our history, however, Kelly properly perceives certain weaknesses or failures in this fact. In a succeeding discussion of die Negro and reconstruction, John Hope Franklin emphasizes die extent to which older stereotypes, once debunked only by such loners as A. A. Taylor and W. E. B. Du Bois (he neglects J. S. Allen), are now being destroyed, and he goes on to attack...