Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Langguth (Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution) takes a warts-and-all approach in profiling the major figures of the Reconstruction. Bitter rivalries within the Republican Party, the impeachment of an accidental president, and the unlikely hanging of a female assassination conspirator all resulted in a tumultuous post-Civil War period that also kick-started what would later become the Civil Rights movement. Langguth employs brief biographical sketches of key figures to describe the turf wars that arose in the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination, the fight to protect newly freed slaves, and the internal administrative battle over the degree of punitive efforts towards the South. His primarily chronological vignettes range from those on Lincoln's bickering cabinet members and antagonistic legislators to former CSA president Jefferson Davis, iconic newspaperman Horace Greeley, and the first African-American governor, P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana. Langguth's well-placed and humanizing personal details about the strident men orchestrating Reconstruction and Johnson's impeachment add depth and immediacy to the significant struggles of reuniting North and South, while clearly showing the harsh results of their actions in a post-Lincoln United States. 20 b&w illus. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This is the fourth book in Langguth's (Union 1812) popular history of the United States that starts with the American Revolution and includes volumes on the War of 1812 and the rise of American sectionalism under President Andrew Jackson. Langguth chose to skip a volume dedicated to the American Civil War and focuses here on Reconstruction. He tells the story chiefly through a series of minibiographies of important figures of the Reconstruction era including Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant as well as lesser-known figures such as Pinckney Benton Stewart "P.B.S." Pinchback and Oliver O. Howard. When Reconstruction ended is a subject of debate for historians, and Langguth concludes his story with Rutherford B. Hayes's withdrawal of the last occupying federal soldiers from the South in 1877. The author places much of the blame for the failure of Reconstruction on Northern racism, indifference to the plight of freed slaves, endemic corruption in Republican presidential administrations, and the Republican-controlled congress. VERDICT This book will appeal to both casual and scholarly readers of history as well as those who enjoyed Eric Foner's Reconstruction and similar titles.-Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A new political history of Reconstruction. Former New York Times reporter Langguth (Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War, 2010, etc.) has written three previous volumes in this series of character-driven histories, beginning with Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (1988), and this will be the final volume. There is a scene in the early pages of this history of the tumultuous period following the Civil War that makes clear just how much regional enmity remained after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner made some barbed comments about South Carolina during an abolitionist speech, and a congressman from that state came to Sumner's office a few days later and beat him senseless with a wooden cane. Sumner took months to recover. During this period, the Union established voting rights and economic freedoms for freed slaves across the South, though such rights would be short-lived. The story begins at the end of the Civil War and moves forward through biographical sketches of Andrew Johnson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, William Henry Steward, Edwin Stanton, Horace Greeley and others. The author ends with a portrait of Jim Crow and the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Popular history has largely forgotten how progressive Reconstruction wasAfrican-Americans were elected to many public offices in the South, had high voting rates and experienced economic opportunities unimaginable during the Civil Warand how "states' rights" supporters slowly took those gains away during the Jim Crow era. The power of the Ku Klux Klan to strike fear was very real, no matter how foreign it seems today. This is a cogent, well-researched, well-told history of that important period. Langguth shows rather than explains, and the result is a rich history of an understudied period of American history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
