From Confederation to Nation: The American Constitution, 1835-1877 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS57 movements to eliminate it have soon given way to the usual belief that the poor are poor because they are unworthy. Social control is a persistent theme whether couched in the rhetoric of evangelicalism or science. Rosenberg's decision to divide her study into two parts—1812 to 1837 and 1837 to 1870—underplays some of these continuities and creates a few organizational problems. She introduces each part with a chapter on the general development of the city. The chapters are informative and well-written but somewhat repetitious. In each section she singles out particular institutions for study rather than surveying the movement as a whole. Some groups appear in both parts and occasional backtracking is necessary to keep the story straight. Overall, the book does make significant contributions to the history of religion, social welfare, and New York City. Rosenberg has plumbed the records of the institutions thoroughly and told their story effectively . James F. Richardson University of Akron From Confederation to Nation: The American Constitution, 1835-1877. By Bernard Schwartz. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Pp. xi, 237. $10.00.) The subject suggested by this book's title and the repute of its author leads one to expect a significant study. Schwartz has written more than a score of books on constitutional and legal history, including his widely acclaimed five volume commentary on the Constitution. And now it appears that he is using his extensive knowledge of the nation's constitutional development to offer a synthesis of a crucial period in the country's history. His thesis is reflected in the book's title. Between the death of Chief Justice Marshall and the end of Reconstruction, Schwartz contends, the United States was transformed from a loose confederation of states into a truly modern nation. He states this argument in two prefatory sentences: "The Constitution which emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction established a federal predominance which dwarfed even the doctrine of national supremacy developed by Marshall. The United States was now emphatically a nation, and not a mere confederation of states." Unfortunately, the expectation which Schwartz created in his title and preface is not delivered. There are two fundamental faults in his work. First, he seriously limited his work through his meager use of sources. His approach to constitutional history is rightly a broad one, requiring, as he acknowledged, an examination of the "political departments " since they "made the most important contributions to the developing Constitution" (p. ix). In spite of this broad approach, the materials he used in writing his book are extremely thin. He used the most 58CIVIL war history obvious secondary and published primary sources, but he seldom used unpublished primary materials or scholarly journal articles. This deficiency led Schwartz to underestimate the extent of scholarly work in an important period of constitutional history. He noted that some revision of the "traditional" view that Reconstruction was "an aberration in American constitutional history" had been done. Yet he insisted that "The time has come for a reassessment of the constitutional implications of Reconstruction" (p. 161). It is clear from monographic literature, from scholarly journals, such as The Journal of Southern History, Civil War History and The Journal of American History, and from papers delivered at major historical conventions that the "reassessment " he called for is well under way, and has been for more than a decade. Second, Schwartz fails to give either a synthetic analysis of the period between 1835 and 1877 or to develop the thesis he clearly stated. There are glimpses of an argument emerging in isolated places in the book, but it never goes beyond that. He says that Jackson's inauguration "marked a definite turning point in the constitutional history of the presidency," that Taney "continued the essential thrust of constitutional development begun by Marshall and his colleagues," especially their emphasis on "national power," and that the Civil War "not only confirmed but accelerated the trend toward strong national government " (pp. 38, 7, 133). These points, however, are mere hints of an argument; and in the last chapter even these are lost in qualifications. For example, he notes that "The post-Civil War period saw...