In the months after Appomattox, the South was plunged into a chaos that surpassed even the disorder of the last hard months of the war itself. Peace brought, if anything, an increased level of violence to the region as local authorities of the former Confederacy were stripped of their power and the returning foot soldiers of the defeated army, hungry and without hope, raided the already impoverished countryside for food and clothing. In the wake of the devastation that followed surrender, even some of the most virulent Yankee-haters found themselves relieved as the Union army began to bring a small level of order to the lawless southern terrain.
Dan T. Carter's When the War Was Over is a social and political history of the two years following the surrender of the Confederacy-the so-called period of Presidential Reconstruction when the South, under the watchful gaze of Congress and the Union army, attempted to rebuild its shattered society and economic structure. Working primarily from rich manuscript sources, Carter draws a vivid portrait of the political leaders who emerged after the war, a diverse group of men-former loyalists as well as a few mildly repentant fire-eaters-who in some cases genuinely sought to find a place in southern society for the newly emancipated slaves, but who in many other cases merely sought to redesign the boundaries of black servitude.
Carter finds that as a group the politicians who emerged in the postwar South failed critically in the test of their leadership. Not only were they unable to construct a realistic program for the region's recovery-a failure rooted in their stubborn refusal to accept the full consequences of emancipation-but their actions also served to exacerbate rather than allay the fears and apprehensions of the victorious North. Even so, Carter reveals, these leaders were not the monsters that many scholars have suggested they were, and it is misleading to dismiss them as racists and political incompetents. In important ways, they represented the most constructive, creative, and imaginative response that the white South, overwhelmed with defeat and social chaos, had to offer in 1865 and 1866. Out of their efforts would come the New South movement and, with it, the final downfall of the plantation system and the beginnings of social justice for the freed slaves.
Industry Reviews
Emory historian Carter, author of the classic Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1969), has painstakingly examined a subject on which there is near-unanimity - the failure of postwar Southern leadership in the brief period of mild Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67) - in order to make a slight but significant correction: the leaders were not die-hard Rebels (or plantation elite) but conservatives of varied background; a substantial number were ready to support industrial development and ("even more surprisingly") development of efficient small-scale farming. But they were undone by ingrained Southern fear-and-dread of blacks, which manifested itself in terror of insurrection; by failure to anticipate Northern shock at the coercive Black Codes of 1865-66; and by Democrat Johnson's alienation of Republican congressional moderates in then vetoing civil rights legislation. (The outcome: Congressional or Black Reconstruction.) Carter develops this argument on several fronts. One is the nature of the leadership: Johnson's seven Southern gubernatorial appointees were neither secessionists (all had opposed secession until late 1860) nor Union loyalists (i.e., they were generally acceptable to the South); more crucially, the white Southerners elected to Congress in the fall of 1865 - and denied seats - were not unreconstructed RebeLs every one (as charged by W.E.B. Du Bois and repeated by historians since) but a conservative mix (of whom "only seven had been secessionists"). On another front, white Southern willingness "to accept almost any form of government that would bring order to a disordered land" was overborne by a tradition of extra-legal repression and Johnson's lack of clear, firm racial policies. Finally, economic self-reconstructionists faced many a dilemma: if, for instance, states repudiated their debts (as the federal government demanded), what would happen to private debts? if private debtors were allowed to postpone repayment (as impoverished citizens demanded), would this not delay recovery? In shading the usual grim picture, Carter confesses himself more depressed: the best that moderate, practical, conciliatory Southerners could do was not very much. As a revised interpretation, however, this has ramifications for any treatment of the Reconstruction period - even one as cut-and-dried as Burke Davis' The Long Surrender (below). (Kirkus Reviews)
