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BOOK REVIEWS77 we could now have a synthetic work that would tell the Louisiana Reconstruction story in full. William S. McFeely Mount Holyoke College Liberty and Union: The Crisis of Popuhr Government, 1830-1890. By David Herbert Donald. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978. Pp. vii-x, 318. $12.50.) David Donald serves notice in the preface that his theme is the conflict between majority rule and minority rights. He proclaims himself a nationalist, unimpressed by ethnic, racial, or religious differences; a conservative, with little faith in legislated solutions or constitutional mechanisms. He notes how living in the twentieth century, where problems of majority rule and minority rights are"still very much with us" influenced him. He poses as a question "do weput the interests of one group or state or section ahead of the nation as a whole" and uses affirmative action policies as an example, as if the either-or choice thus given his readers is all there is. Having discovered the author's prejudices and direction, the reader may often wonder what happened. In the early chapters, the author seems to try to make his case, but by mid-volume he begins to miss his opportunities. How did majority rule and minority rights function during die Civil War? How did they operate in the post-war period with die virtually unrestricted growth of big business; how did they concern the labor and agrarian protests, and the scandal-smirched arena of politics? The author falls silent, except for a very loosely-defined concept he calls "The American Compromise." "The American Compromise," extracted from Francis Lieber's On Civil Liberty and Self-Government, allowed Americans to "eat thencake and have it" by exalting an undespotic brand of nationalism while at the same time preserving freedom for "local and particularistic interests." The remainder of diat chapter is an unconvincing attempt to fit post-bellum American history into the "American Compromise" theme. One is led to believe majority rights and minority rule were compromised, but one is in the dark as to how they resurfaced. After all, we were told in the preface that majority rule and minority rights problems are "still very much with us." The last paragraph of text in the book, on page272, perhaps is meant to explain this, but it is nothing more than a fascinating cop-out. The volume suffers from a failure to use recent black history or women's studies, or indeed die role of any minority group: curious, given the central theme; not surprising, given the author's admitted predilections, but still ironic. Otherwise, the survey ofhistory with those 78CIVIL WAR HISTORY limitations is certainly adequate, but nothing that could not be gleaned from a dozen textbooks, including die American history text the author co-authored. However, if the reader is quite willing to accept the author's own hypothesis uncritically, the book does work. It is, after all, Professor Donald's book; it is history as seen through his eyes, refined by his concepts, and he makes littleapology forit. He does not ask the reader to agree with him, and his own biases may serve to provoke and even stimulate die reader. Among other positive qualities of the book one may include the fine rhetoric; the theme that people in the North and South were far more alike than they were different—an obvious, perhaps, but often neglected aspect of mid-nineteenth century United States history; and well-chosen illustrations and maps. Robert H. Jones The University of Akron The Shvedrivers: Bhck Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South. By William L. Van Deburg. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Pp. xvii, 202. $16.95.) Van Deburg's book is a valuable addition to the literature on the Old South. Heretofore, the mysterious and ill defined slave driver (or foreman) has not received much attention, but this short and perceptive volume successfully adds a new aspect to this topic. Not satisfied with die image of the "brutal" drivers established by Harriet B. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Deburg contends that the drivers "sided with labor" as opposed to management. The author admits that his is not a definitive study. The first (of...

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