An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS107 portions will be incorporated into a work that will supersede Crandall and Harwell as well as Winkler and Friend. For the present (and it will be a long present) this L· the bibliography of Texas for a vital period in its history. It is a useful, informative, imposing work, fully worth its imposing price.„ r Richard Harwell Bowdoin College An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867. By W. R. Brock. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963. Pp. xii, 312. $10.00.) During the 1930's and 1940's historians substantially demolished the idea that Reconstruction within the southern states was nothing more than a long, hideous carnival of carpetbag corruption and Negro clownishness ; only those whose historical knowledge is badly out of date, or who have a vested political or emotional interest in this legend continue to profess it. Today historians are performing the same sort of operation on Reconstruction at the national level. No longer do they portray Andrew Johnson as a heroic martyr to the cause of moderation and executive independence, the Radicals as vindictive fanatics and/or unscrupulous agents of Big Business, and Reconstruction policy as misguided and oppressive . Instead the trend is to condemn Johnson as a bungler and racist, to praise the Radicals as idealistically motivated statesmen, and to defend Reconstruction in general as a necessary and (within its limitations) intelligent attempt to extend democracy to the Negro. An American Crisis is in accord with this latest revisionism and makes a powerful contribution to it. At the same time it supplies a long-standing need for a thorough analysis of the role of Congress as an institution in formulating Reconstruction policy during the vital period immediately following the war. Too often, especially in textbooks, Congress is described as having been under the dictatorial sway of Thad Stevens and Charles Sumner, or at best dominated by an omnipotent clique of Radicals engaged in a sinister conspiracy to carry out a "Second American Revolution." This study shows convincingly that such a picture is not merely oversimplified but utterly false. There were other strong personalities in Congress besides Stevens and Sumner (the latter, in fact, was a complete outsider when it came to the practical work of legislation), the moderate Republicans in the beginning held greater power than the Radicals, and the Radicals—far from possessing monolithic unitydiffered among themselves on many key issues. Only the blunders of Johnson and the blindness of the South made it possible for Stevens and the Radicals to acquire so much influence. And even then they did not at any time or on any issue get their own way completely: Reconstruction was the product of long debates and agonized compromises involving Congress as a whole. The author of this book, W. R. Brock, is an Englishman and a profes- 108CIVIL WAR HISTORY sor at Cambridge University, where he specializes in American history. However, rather than his overseas background being a disadvantage it proves in several respects to be an asset. This is to be seen particularly in his demonstration of how the U.S. Constitution itself greatly handicapped the establishment and implementation of Reconstruction policy, and by his placing of the Radicals in the general context of mid-nineteenth century liberal bourgeois movements. Also worthy of special note is his description of the personnel and processes of Congress in the postwar era; from it one obtains a better understanding not only of Reconstruction, but of American government as a whole during this period. Brock wrote this book before the appearance of John and LaWanda Cox's Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, and thus did not have the benefit of their researches showing that Johnson was motivated by other than a blind doctrinaire belief in states rights—that his intransigent attitude toward Congress was in large part the result of a determination to form and lead a new political party combining conservative Republicans and Democrats. But this lack, for which of course Brock cannot be criticized, in no way impairs the overall merit of his work, which has clearly profited from the new school of Reconstruction historians, especially Eric McKitrick 's Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. I would like to conclude...