![]() But in this sweeping, prodigiously researched narrative, Douglas Egerton brings a much bigger, even more dramatic story into view, exploring state and local politics and tracing the struggles of some fifteen hundred African-American officeholders, in both the North and. He uses words such as "guerrilla partisans," "vigilante outfits" and "terrorism".Ĭopyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Previous histories of Reconstruction have focused on Washington politics. ![]() Bordewich's review describes just how recalcitrant these people were. Bordewich and Egerton assume that the vast majority of white southerners would simply have yielded to force as they had no choice but to do in 1865, but much of Mr. The Confederacy would and did accept whatever terms were offered in 1865, but what about later? Did the Union have enough troops to enforce the "moment of possibility"? Would Northern voters continue to support what would have amounted to an incredible financial commitment in this undertaking? Even if Hannibal Hamlin had become president rather than Andrew Johnson, how long would he have stayed committed to the slaughter that would have gone on? Messrs. to tear slavery from American soil by its roots, by stripping former Confederates of political power while transforming former slaves into educated landowning citizens," it would have required either imprisoning or murdering most white Southerners from 1865 forward (happy talk about biracial Reconstruction governments notwithstanding). ![]() ![]() 18) makes me wonder about another "possibility." My grandparents lived through Reconstruction in Texas, and they and all the white people they knew were Confederate Democrats to their deaths. Egerton's "The Wars of Reconstruction" (Books, Jan. ![]()
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