The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (review)

86CIVIL WAR HISTORY ented tenth." Another contributor, Marcus Garvey, spoke only the mother tongue, but he did so without equivocation: "Has white America really considered the Negro in the light of permanent human progress? The answer is NO." These writers share some things in common, among them a penchant for social criticism and exhortation. There is an ever-present tendency toward self-scrutiny, often sharply toned, suggesting that for the Negro there has been no escaping the problem of his identity and role in the land of his birth. These readings also convey something of the Negro's confrontation with America, an encounter whose deferment is not as easy now as then. A book of readings seems especially to invite reviewer contrariness, if the following lines require no better reason. Brotz's inclusion of Edward Blyden needs explaining. Bom in the West Indies, Blyden's longest stay in the United States was seven months in 1850, when he was only eighteen, and his writings appeared in quarterlies having little circulation among Negroes. Bishop Henry M. Turner might have been a more defensible choice as emigrationist. A spot somewhere might have been found for the respected and widely published Howard University dean, Kelly Miller. Many of the writers do not fit neatly into the categories Brotz has for them. Gamet is listed as an assimilationist, yet at one time he was president of the colonizationalist African Civilization Society, and his greatest ambition was realized when he went, as American minister, to Liberia, where he died. Some of the readings could have been pruned without damage; because one of the writers burdened his pages with the full text of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 is no reason for Brotz to follow suit. And, finally, whether the back-to-Africa sentiment was ever as strong among Negroes as he suggests is hardly provable, such sentiment often being an expression of racial pride or a disillusionment about America without, however, any real intention of ever taking leave of it. Such debatable matters do not obscure the overall marked usefulness of this volume. Especially to be praised is Brotz's thirty-three page introduction , a model of its kind for a definition of basic premises, for its perception in comparing one intellectual with another, and for its general insights, all expressed in vigorous prose. Benjamin Quarles Morgan State College The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865-1877. By James E. Sefton. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Pp. xiv, 284. $8.00.) Using the largely unworked files of southern command posts, Professor James E. Sefton has investigated the Army's successes and failures in carrying out federal reconstruction policy in the South. His thesis is that the Army executed its assignment as well as could be expected, considering the nature of the assignment. "The failures of Reconstruction," BOOK REVIEWS87 Sefton writes, "are not so much failures on the part of the military administrators as they are failures of the policy itself." In Sefton's view that policy was at best ambiguous, and at worst it was a wrongheaded design to use military compulsion to effect a change in southern customs. Thus Sefton's interpretation is at variance with current trends in reconstruction historiography, which point increasingly toward the conclusion that Radicalism was too timid in its approach rather than the reverse. Heroes of the book are moderate generals such as William Tecumseh Sherman , Edward Canby, Alfred Howe Terry, Thomas John Wood, and George A. Custer, all of whom questioned the necessity and wisdom of special legislation on behalf of the Negro. The recipient of Sefton's special ire is General John Pope, commander of the Georgia-Florida-Alabama District, whom he regards as a failure in statesmanship. Instead of creating new districts when delegates were elected for the 1867 constitutional conventions , Pope simply retained the existing state senatorial districts. Drawn by the legislature chosen during presidential reconstruction, when Negroes were not part of the electorate, over half of the Georgia districts contained Negro majorities. Sefton expresses sympathy for "the white Georgians who denounced Pope as a partisan zealot," and he contends that the general should have redistricted in a manner that would have...