Carpetbagger of Conscience: A Biography of John Emory Bryant by Ruth Currie-McDaniel (review)

270 Shorter Book Reviews Ruth Currie-McDaniel. Carpetbagger of Conscience: A Biography of John Emory Bryant. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. 238 pp. Illus. Carpetbagger of Conscience is a brisk, straightforward, political biography of John Emory Bryant, a Maine Republican who made a career in Georgia politics during the Reconstruction era. After a brief description of his early life with emphasis on his occupation as school teacher, Currie-McDaniel moves quickly to the heart of her study: Bryant's Civil War service on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, his brief stint with the Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia, and his decadeand -a-half involvement in the turbulent events of that state as politician and editor of a Republican journal. The book's greatest strength rests in its political narrative. The author presents a crisp blow-by-blow account of the intense infighting which undermined the Republican party as an effective force in Reconstruction Georgia. Torn between the arguments of those who promoted active black participation and those who courted lily-white "independence" at the expense ofracial equality, Republicans sowed the seeds of their own destruction in the presence of ever-growing Democratic popularity. Currie-McDaniel handles the intricacies of Republican factionalism effectively and establishes Bryant as an important party figure, whose basic support of black progress remained true to his party's stated principles. The author also presents a well-informed critique of Republican racial attitudes . Basing her assessment on important recent literature, she is fully aware of both the strengths and limitations of post-Civil War liberal ideology. She correctly points out that racial attitudes endemic to American society as a whole underminded the capacity of carpetbaggers and others to provide effectively for the economic, social and political needs of newly-freed Georgians. On the other hand, she recognizes that such men as Bryant did profess to have the latter's interests at heart. Indeed, despite the ideological shortcomings of his generation and his own tendency to place politics and self-interest high on his list of priorities, Bryant stood out as a consistent supporter of civil, political and educational rights for blacks. Such consistency, argues Currie-McDaniel, reflected the carpetbagger's ''conscience.'' It is precisely at this point, however, that further analysis would help. Despite her best efforts with the sources at her disposal, the author apparently lacks the information to explore Bryant's ideology in depth. Our understanding of how racial attitudes affected both the inner workings of the Republican political party and the eventual status of blacks in Georgia would have been greatly enhanced by a detailed examination of Bryant's ideas on these topics. One wonders, for Shorter Book Reviews 271 example, just what sort of education he had in mind for black students. The author notes the importance of recent critiques of Northern educational philosophy by such scholars as Ronald Butcher and Robert Morris, but pauses only briefly to assess Bryant's views in the context of such work. Indeed throughout the book, the depth of Bryant's conscience remains elusive. Currie-McDaniel's ample circumstantial evidence and the direct quotations she provides convince us of his liberal credentials, but it would be helpful to have had more from Bryant himself on these important questions. Furthermore, some nagging doubts-fully identified by the author-remain. Our hero seems to have been as preoccupied with his own political status as.he was with ideological concerns. On several occasions, he faced accusations and investigations into his political and financial behavior. On each occasion he escaped, but not with his reputation intact. And finally, in intriguing counterpoint to the professed loftiness of his ideals, he contrived to be away from his wife, Emma Spaulding Bryant. Currie-McDaniel's fascinating account of the couple's coITespondence and of Bryant's lame efforts to explain the need for such separation, as well as his wife's increasingly feminist determination to make some sort of life for herself, may add nothing to our understanding of his Republican princi pies, but raise doubts about his credibility. Richard Paul Fuke Department of History Wilfrid Laurier University John H. Haley. Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina. Chapel Hill...