Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction 1867-1877 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS73 Of equal interest are the chapters detailing the rise of "Liberalism" and the "Sentimental Reformers." How these movements differed from earlier efforts to transform society, how they affected the decline of Radicalism, and how they sought to cope with the labor question are problems which receive close attention. The book ends with a consideration of the greenback issue and contains appendices complete with statistics of social stratification, sex and nativity groups among industrial wage earners, and trade union material. Professor Montgomery has done a thorough job. A note of caution, however, ought to be injected. Although the author professes to see some connection between the radical movements of the last decades of the century and their Civil War predecessor, it would appear that the two were actually quite different. The Radical Republicans were a group held together by one central theme: the clarification of race relations in America. Committed to the restriction of slavery before the war, to emancipation during the conflict, and to full citizenship for the freedmen afterward, they were divided on almost all other questions . Although Professor Montgomery believes that only those who favored a protective tariff and a greenback currency were "Radicals in the fullest sense of the word," the distinction is difficult to maintain. After all, George W. Julian, Charles Sumner, and Zachariah Chandler were certainly ultras by any definition of the term. But the author's scheme would relegate them to a group somehow less committed. All three believed in hard money, and Sumner and Julian favored low tariffs as well. That they were any less Radical than Benjamin F. Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and Benjamin F. Butler would be difficult to establish. The labor question undoubtedly contributed to the decline of Radical Republicanism . In assessing the bridge between later radical movements and the vanguard of emancipation, however, it would seem to be simpler to recognize that the connection was tenuous, that some former radicals became "Liberals" and "Sentimental Reformers" as well as labor reformers, but that none of these movements, as the author himself has so ably proven, were dependent on the old radicals in any special sense. With this reservation, Beyond Equality will stand as an important contribution to the study of post-Civil War America. Hans L. Tbefousse Brooklyn College Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction 1867-1877. By Lerone Bennett, Jr. (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1967. Pp. 401. $6.95.) Reconstruction was "the only period in American history in which black people had real, that is to say effective, power." This is the thesis of Bhck Power U.S.A. by Lerone Bennett, senior editor of Ebony. His book is a popular history of Reconstruction which analyzes the political role of Negroes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, where, he contends, "the fact of black authority was open, direct, and compelling," and in other southern states, "where black voters had large influence but little decisionmaking power." As evidence for such authority and influence, Bennett points to strong civil rights and social welfare measures enacted by southern legislatures during Reconstruction. Bennett drives home his thesis by conveying a sense of the individuality and personality of Negroes who held office during Reconstruction. This is perhaps the book's greatest merit. In Reconstruction, as in other phases of American history, the Negro has too frequently been an anonymous figure, unnamed and distinguished only by his race. Bennett not only names the black politicians of Reconstruction, but weaves short biographical sketches of them into the political narrative. Unfortunately , however, the effect of this sort of treatment is to exaggerate the extent of black power during Reconstruction. 74CIVIL WAR HISTORY As popular history, Black Power U.S.A. probably reveals as much or more about the thinking of black power advocates today than about the extent of black power during Reconstruction. Bennett's purpose is explicitly didactive. Quoting Santayana 's dictum that men who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, he narrates "the triumphs and failures of this first Reconstruction" as a means of understanding "the second Reconstruction we are now undergoing." The lesson is not an encouraging one. Reconstruction failed. One reason was the lack...