After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (review)

92CIVIL WARHISTORY modek did, however, win adoption by military, naval, and police forces on both sides of the Adantic. Some saw considerable action. At San Juan Hill, in 1898, the United States Army made its first use of Gatlings in close support of an infantry attack. But this was the last important employment of the weapon. The development of effective automatic machineguns rendered the Gatling obsolete and little more was heard of it for half a century. It survived only as the source of the slang word "gat," meaning a pistol or revolver. Only in 1945, as a result of the growing need for a reliable, extremely high-rate-of-fire machinegun, unlikely to overheat or burn out, was the Gatling principle revived. Today it is the basis of major airborne weapon systems. Firearms experts Paul Wahl and Donald R. Toppel have compiled a useful and interesting semi-technical history of the development and employment of the Gatling Gun and of the life and career of its colorful inventor. Profusely illustrated, although lacking color plates, the book includes a fascinating array of sketches, photographs, model drawings, document reproductions, and other pictures guaranteed to please the taste of the "coffee table book" collector as well as the more serious scholar. The text contains both historical narrative and detailed weapons specifications, in addition to colorful eyewitness accounts of military and naval actions in which the Gatling saw service. The authors have drawn their material from "nearly a decade of research" in archival sources, including the records of the Gatling Gun Company itself, and published works, as well as from their own long years of experience as gun collectors and military students. Unfortunately for the scholarly reader, their product is undocumented and their short bibliography restricted to only a few published references. But their work appears to be careful and generally accurate. It will probably remain the last word on the Gatling Gun. Stanley L. Falk Industrial College of the Armed Forces After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877. By Joel Williamson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 442. $7.50.) This volume is an important and able work of revision. It destroys many stereotypes of Reconstruction history, with the result of placing the Negro in a much more favorable light than older accounts have done. In the process, the author challenges a number of previously accepted views. For example, he maintains that when the opportunity presented itself during the war, it was the trusted house servants and skilled mechanics who fled the plantations, and not the field hands. He also disputes the idea that the large plantations were broken into small units; in this same vein, the tradition of a wide migration by Negroes from the plantations is exaggerated . Professor Williamson states that contrary to northern misrepresentation , the Black Codes were not designed to reinslave the Negro, but for BOOKREVIEWS93 bis protection. The reason why many Negroes refused to sign labor contracts was not unwillingness to work, but the hope of land division. Contrary to recent interpretations, segregation was strongly developed during Reconstruction and was advanced in part by the Negroes themselves and by northern whites residing within the state. One of the more valuable chapters of this study is the description of the Negro politician, a very different portrayal than that given by James S. Pike in the Prostrate State. Williamson states that few of the Negroes in politics were straight from the cotton rows. Indeed, many were men of real ability, and vivid portraits are drawn of some, such as Francis Cardozo and Robert Smalls. One of the more prominent leaders, W. J. Whipper, advocated giving the vote to women. Williamson ako gives a more favorable account of the scalawags than is traditional. Still, he does not minimize the susceptibility of both Negro politicians and scalawags to corruption. The author represents the new breed of southern historians, who have emancipated themselves from old assumptions and stereotypes, who dig deeply in the sources, maintain a very liberal oudook, and write with sophistication and charm. Clement Eaton University of Kentucky Labor Revolt in Alabama: The Great Strike of 1894. By Robert D. Ward and...