Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (review)

76CIVIL WAR HISTORY it "reads like a tract written against the horrors and stupidity of war." (P- 17). John Kent Folmar California State College (Pa.) Black New Orleans, 1860-1880. By John W. Blassingame. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Pp. xvii, 301. $9.95.) During the period from 1860 to 1880, black New Orleanians experienced the last days of the antebellum era, a brief period under Confederate rule, an "interregnum" under a succession of provisional Unionist regimes, a decade of Radical reconstruction, and a return to native white governance under the Redeemers. It was a time of transition for New Orleans Negroes in other facets of life as well. During this period the city's black community more than doubled in population , absorbing an enormous influx of freedmen from surrounding rural areas. These newcomers were required to make radical economic, familial, and psychological adjustments to overcome the bitter heritage of slavery and come to terms with urban life. These two decades witnessed the genesis of public education for black children, creation of three Negro colleges, a proliferation of black churches and fraternal groups, impressive achievements in the fine arts, and a mounting spirit of militance in race relations. These developments are the heart of John W. Blassingame's Black New Orleans, 1860-1880. Virtually ignoring what he has labeled "the old and often-studied debate over politics," Blassingame has concentrated upon social and economic phenomena in "hope of developing some new insights about the period." He has been quite successful. His cogent discussions of black entrepreneurs, college life, and creative intellectuals should help bury, at long last, many demeaning stereotypes applied to New Orleans Negroes by three generations of white scholars. Especially valuable is Blassingame's chapter on family life, in which he has summoned impressive evidence to support his contention that the great majority of black families in the city were male-dominated, rather stable, and imbued with the "missionaries' Victorian values" on romantic love and family roles, despite the legacy of slavery and a population in which women outnumbered men nearly three to two. While the diverse nature of the New Orleans black community has been acknowledged by many historians, Blassingame has provided the first truly authoritative analysis of that diversity. His reconstruction of the lives of ex-slaves and Creole gens de couleur, craftsmen and unskilled laborers, and the various social strata within the black community substantiate his claim that the New Orleans black population was indeed "sui generis." This study is not without weaknesses, however. Blassingame's decision to exclude politics is understandable but unfortunate, for, despite his assertion to the contrary, the role played by black politicians and BOOK REVIEWS77 voters during this period hardly constitutes an "old and often-studied debate." The chapter on race relations might have been strengthened by information on interracial athletic competition and by an account of black efforts to retain public school desegregation after 1877. More serious, however, is Blassingame's occasional failure to apply the same rigid standards of scholarship to whites that he has applied to Negroes. His discussion of the "unbridled licentiousness of the planters" seems to imply that sexual exploitation of slave women by their masters was virtually universal in Louisiana, a verdict not wholly borne out by slave narratives or other reasonably trustworthy sources. The name of Henry Clay Warmoth, reconstruction governor of Louisiana, has been repeatedly misspelled "Warmouth." In lumping State Superintendent of Education Thomas W. Conway with other white Radical politicians as "self-seeking, avaricious, power-hungry . . . white supremacists ," Blassingame has rendered a rather unfair judgment. On the whole, however, Black New Orleans is a remarkably judicious, painstaking piece of scholarship. Its forays into economic and social analysis have indeed provided new insights into the complex world of New Orleans Negroes and in the process laid to rest many erroneous assumptions and timeworn stereotypes. It could well serve as a model for students of any ethnic group in any American community . Roger A. Fischer University of Minnesota, Duluth First Freedom: The Responses of Ahbama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction. By Peter Kolchin. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972. Pp. 215. $10.00.) This book, the author writes, deals ". . . with...