The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867. By David Donald. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Pp. xviii, 105. $4.00.) This brief volume of 105 pages of text and appendices contains the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History delivered at Louisiana State University in April, 1965. It may turn out that Professor Donald's 1965 lectures will be discussed and debated as heatedly among historians as any set of Fleming Lectures to date, for they rest on a proposition that is anathema to many historians—the proposition that "conventional approaches" in studying the past "have proved less than successful," and therefore that historians should experiment with methods used in the "behavioral sciences." That portion of the past with which Professor Donald is concerned in these lectures is "The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867." He finds that the rewriting of the history of reconstruction in recent years has effectively questioned the findings of previous scholars, but that it has not yet developed a new synthesis-interpretation to explain the period as a whole, and is thus "stalled" or "deadlocked." As a way out of this deadlock, Professor Donald presents what he describes as "three exercises in applying techniques more frequently used in the behavioral sciences to the history of the Republican party during the years from 1863 to 1867." The first of the three exercises is devoted to explaining why Presidents Lincoln and Johnson followed a "Moderate course toward the South" during reconstruction. Professor Donald finds the explanation in election statistics : the strength of the two national political parties was so closely balanced that the election of a President required support from a "coalition of the center," drawn from the adherents of both parties. Both Lincoln and Johnson appealed to that center coalition by following moderate policies, and their policies are to be explained by the political statistics, rather than by the personal characteristics or ideologies of the two Presidents. The second exercise is concerned with the problem of defining the membership and the policies of the several factions within the Republican party from 1863 to 1867. The basis used by Professor Donald for identifying which Republicans were "Radical," which were "Moderate," and which were "Conservative" is the record of roll call votes in the House of Representatives . He analyzes six roll call votes in the House of Representatives during the Thirty-eighth Congress (1864-1865) and from those votes identifies fifty congressmen as "Radicals," i.e., "House Republicans who favored congressional, rather than presidential, control over the reconstruction process and who looked toward punitive action against the Southern rebels." 267 268CIVIL WAR HISTORY On the basis of an additional six roll call votes in the House of Representatives during the Thirty-ninth Congress (second session, 1866-1867), Professor Donald singles out seventy-two Republicans as "Radicals," thirty-two as "Moderates" (plus one Democrat), and thirteen as "Conservative." When he compares the margins by which the various Republican representatives were elected to office during the 1860's, Professor Donald finds a basic correlation between voting "Radical" in Congress and winning elections by large margins, and vice versa: "When a district, over a long series of elections , showed itself to be doubtful or only marginally Republican, its Representative frequently tended to vote with the Moderate or Conservative blocs in Congress. But when there was a consistent degree of high Republican strength in a district, its Congressman usually belonged to the Radical faction of the party." Professor Donald explains this correlation by assuming that "most Republican voters were themselves Radicals, in the sense that they desired the abolition of slavery, the reorganization of Southem society, and the perpetuation of Republican control of the national government ." On this assumption, the natural tendency for a Republican representative would be to vote for "Radical" measures; but in a district in which elections were closely contested between Republicans and Democrats, the only Republicans who could win elections to Congress would be those whose "Moderate" views on reconstruction won the support of marginal voters. The third and final exercise in the volume analyzes the legislative history in the House of Representatives of the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, the basic statute providing for...