H. Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction (To 1877)

3359. Bancroft, Frederic. The life of William H. Seward. New York, Harper, 1900. 2 v. 0–1693 E415.9.S4B3

A critical but sympathetic biography of Seward (1801–1872) whose aim in life, not entirely achieved, "was to be supremely great both in his generation and in history." Seward began his active political career in 1830 as an Antimason, joined the Whig Party in 1834, and served in the United States Senate from 1848 until his appointment as Lincoln’s Secretary of State. His opposition to slavery in the Senate was partially motivated by the increasing power of the antislavery movement in the North, which led him to enter the Republican Party in 1854. Although an acknowledged party leader, he failed of nomination to the Presidency in both 1856 and 1860. As Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, Seward became, in the author’s opinion, a diplomatist and statesman of the first rank. He was the first Secretary to publish diplomatic dispatches, a part of his campaign to mold public opinion in favor of the policies of the Government. His great triumph was his skillful checking of the interventionist aims of Great Britain and France in the Civil War, and the reduction of their unofficial interference by manipulating the sympathies of the European opponents of slavery. In the postwar years Seward supported Andrew Johnson’s policy of moderation toward the South, forced France to withdraw from Mexico, and purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. Personally amiable and without malice, Seward is here characterized as "preeminently a man of theories and expedients, but he also had settled convictions and sound judgment."

3360. Barnes, Gilbert Hobbs. The antislavery impulse, 1830–1844. New York, Appleton-Century, 1933. 298 p. 33–38695 E449.B264

"This volume is published from a fund contributed to the American Historical Association by the Carnegie Corporation of New York."

"Works consulted": p. 199–202.

This influential work traces the main current of antislavery agitation and organization in the United States to the great evangelical revival which reached its peak in 1830, and in particular to the preaching of Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875), a successful lawyer transformed into an itinerant Presbyterian revivalist of extraordinary fervor and persuasion. At Utica, N.Y., Finney not merely converted but gathered into his Holy Band a student at Hamilton College, Theodore Dwight Weld, and his older friend and mentor, Charles Stuart, a retired captain of the British Army. Finney’s mission in New York City brought into line the wealthy and philanthropic merchants, Arthur and Lewis Tappan. In 1833, on learning of the British measure for abolishing West Indian slavery, the New York group proceeded to organize the American AntiSlavery Society, which in the following year began its nationwide agitation for immediate abolition. In 1837 pamphleteering was subordinated to evangelism, as The Seventy were recruited and sent out to work in the rural counties. In the same year their efforts produced the flood of antislavery petitions to Congress, where they were "stowed away in the antechambers by waggon loads." Antislavery at once became a live political issue, and the first supporter of the petitions, J. Q. Adams, was soon joined by allies on the floors of Congress. "From first to last, throughout the antislavery host the cause continued to be a moral issue and not an economic one." The book is very largely based on original and previously unexploited sources such as the Weld, Lewis Tappan, J. R. Giddings, and J. G. Birney papers, and nearly one–third (p. 203–291) consists of notes containing extensive extracts from them.

3361. Beale, Howard K. The critical year; a study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1930. 454 p. 30–14060 E668.B354. Bibliography: p. 407–435.

The election year of 1866 is here critically examined through contemporary newspapers, private correspondence, local campaign speeches, and political sermons, in order to determine the true motives behind the campaigns of Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans. In the author’s analysis, the election issue was not merely one of deciding the policy to be followed in dealing with the conquered South, but was also the decisive test of power between the rising industries and businesses of the Northeast, represented by the Radical Republicans, and the agrarian South and West, championed by Johnson. The victory of the Radical Republicans and the economic interests allied with them was achieved by adroit propaganda, appealing to the sectionalism and war-bred hatred of the electorate, rather than presenting any actual issues upon which they could express their preference.

3362. Bowers, Claude G. The tragic era; the revolution after Lincoln. New York, Blue Ribbon Books [193–] xxii, 567 p. 37–10370 E668.B7793

Reprinted from the original edition (copyrighted 1929).

"Manuscripts, books, and newspapers consulted and cited": p. [541]–547.

The late Ambassador Bowers (1879–1957) quoted with approval Hilaire Belloc’s dictum that "readable history is melodrama," and of his three principal dramatizations of American history (cf. nos. 3281 & 3320) The Tragic Era is the most melodramatic. Anyone who wants to approach Reconstruction and the Gilded Age in Washington through a crowded and stirring narrative in which the whites are dazzling and the blacks Stygian will find this to his taste. For such history there must be dramatis personae, and Andrew Johnson and Thaddeus Stevens, cast respectively as Gabriel and Satan, have each a portrait-chapter to himself. There must be a backdrop, provided by a brilliant chapter on "Washington: the Social Background." Comic relief is provided by "The Great American Farce," as the impeachment trial of President Johnson is denominated. Peripeteia in the action are indicated by such chapter headings as "Military Satraps and Revolution," "The Failing of Rotten Fruit," and "The Red Shirts Ride." For all this, the volume is based upon a thorough knowledge of memoirs and biographies, supplemented from a few manuscript collections and a wide use of contemporary newspaper files. Mr. Bowers was neither an unlearned nor a careless historian, and his vigorous partisanship is harmless because it is so honestly avowed.

3363. Buck, Paul H. The road to reunion, 1865–1900. Boston, Little, Brown, 1937. 320 p. 37–4978 E661.B84

The morrow of Appomattox saw a North arrogant in victory, and a South "spent and exhausted, yet ready to offer stolid resistance" to aggression. During the 12 Reconstruction years, while the North was building its policy upon force, sectional division was perhaps intensified. But before as well as after 1877, "the sturdy barriers of sectional antipathy and distrust crumbled one by one." Within a generation of Appomattox "an American nationalism existed which derived its elements indiscriminately from both the erstwhile foes." As the author states, virtually every activity of the American people during the period had some bearing upon sectional reconciliation, and he traces its progress in a variety of spheres: economic development and integration, the rise of a new generation in the South, the appearance of a new Southern literature hospitably received in the North, and the fraternizing of veterans’ organizations. Perhaps the decisive element which permitted the "new patriotism" of 1898 was the acquiescence of leaders of Northern opinion in the disfranchisement of the Southern Negro.

3364. Cate, Wirt Armistead. Lucius Q. C. Lamar, secession and reunion. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1935. 594 p. illus. 35–9410 E664.L2C37. Bibliography: p. 555–563.

Lamar (1825–1893), the nephew of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar and the son-in-law of Augustus B. Longstreet, was a Georgian by birth. He represented Mississippi in the two Congresses before the Civil War, drafted the Mississippi ordinance of secession, held a commission in the Confederate Army, and went to Europe as a Confederate commissioner. His real eminence, however, began in 1872, when he succeeded in winning election to the U. S. House of Representatives, and soon thereafter led in the elimination of carpetbag rule from Mississippi. His distinguished and conciliatory service in the U.S. Senate culminated in his appointment by President Cleveland, first as Secretary of the Interior in 1885, and then to the Supreme Court in 1888, in both of which positions the ex-Confederate became a living symbol of restored national harmony. Mr. Cate’s biography is extremely laudatory, but has much reason for being so.

3365. Coulter, Ellis M. Travels in the Confederate States, a bibliography. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1948. xiv, 289 p. (American exploration and travel [11]) 48–7183 Z1251.S7C68

Travel, in the ordinary sense, is a rarity if not an impossibility in wartime, and this annotated bibliography, which derives its title from the series of which it forms a part, is somewhat misleadingly named. Most of the 492 titles which are here described in considerable detail are the personal narratives, letters, or diaries of soldiers. Somewhat unexpectedly, Southern soldier-writers are in a decided minority; many who did write wrote late and from memory, and Dr. Coulter has excluded most of their publications as "almost worthless" for his purpose. Many of the Northerners, however, are here reproached with being prejudiced witnesses. A considerable proportion of the tires are Northern regimental histories, selected whenever the author was a member of the unit and included descriptive detail. The entries list the illustrations in each work, and the annotations give "some estimate of the nature of its content, its reliability, and the itinerary of the author." In addition to the book’s expresspurpose of showing what the South was like in wartime, it is a valuable guide to personal materials on the campaigns in Southern territory.

3366. Craven, Avery O. The coming of the Civil War. [2d ed. Chicago] University of Chicago Press, 1957. 491 p. 57–8572 E338–C92 1957

The second edition of this work differs little from the first of 1942, but adds a preface in which the author tells that it arose out of an attempt to write a history of American democracy. He soon realized that the democratic process in the United States had "completely failed in the critical period that culminated in the Civil War," and this book was the result of his effort to find out why. He finds it necessary to go as far back as 1800 to provide an adequate background, and he approaches the situation from the angle of the South, "since that section’s ways and institutions were under fire." Southern arguments in favor of slavery are represented as a reaction to an aggressive attack upon the institution within as well as outside the South. Rising emotionalism in the North engendered by decades of abolitionist propaganda is given the major blame for placing the two sections in irreconcilable frames of mind which left no alternative save secession and war. Despite the divisions which rendered the Democratic Party ineffectual in its efforts for compromise, the author believes that if the Republican movement had been less intransigent, slavery would ultimately have eliminated itself without any breach of the Union. Professor Craven nevertheless asserts that his conclusions "point out the tragedy of being human rather than of being either Southern or Northern."

3367. Craven, Avery O. Edmund Ruffin, Southerner; a study in secession. New York, Appleton, 1932. 283 p. 32–8631 F230.R94

"Notes," containing bibliography: p. 261–[271]. A native of Prince George’s County, Virginia, Edmund Ruffin (1794–1865) was one of the South’s most noted agriculturalists and became one of its earliest and most emphatic and fanatical secessionists. His writings on slavery and Southern rights vied in quantity with his writings on agriculture. As the founder of the League of United Southerners, Ruffin was allowed to fire the first shot from Morris Island against Fort Sumter. He never held a civil or military commission from the Confederacy, but nevertheless committed suicide when it collapsed. Mr. Craven has written a penetrating study of this man who, however interesting, is less important as an individual than as a representative of the tone and temper of his section and class.

3368. Current, Richard Nelson. Old Thad Stevens, a story of ambition. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1942. 344 p. 43–52549 E415.9.S84C8. Bibliography: p. 323–328.

Stevens (1792–1868) was a Vermonter by birth but became a lawyer and an iron manufacturer in central Pennsylvania. From 1831 he was a leading politician in the Antimasonic, Whig, Free-Soil, and Republican Parties, and always showed himself a zealous advocate of democratic measures and an intransigent foe of any form of aristocratic privilege. In the Pennsylvania Legislature in the 1830’s he did much to extend the system of free schools to the entire state. In the U. S. House of Representatives, from 1849 to 1853 and again from 1859 until his death, he was a vociferous opponent of slavery and the Southern slaveowners. During the Civil War he continued to assail Lincoln’s administration for its allegedly slack conduct of the war, and on its close he became the most influential House member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. He led in the measures which wrecked Lincoln’s plan of Reconstruction, hobbled the Johnson administration, and culminated in the impeachment and trial of President Johnson. He died soon after the latter’s acquittal. This harsh and enigmatic figure has attracted a succession of biographers, none of whom can be said to have read the riddle and produced a definitive life, for which sufficient material probably does not exist. Mr. Current’s life is based on solid research, but goes rather far in reducing Stevens’ avowed passion for equality to a politician’s love of power and a desire to make his party "a vehicle for industrialists like himself." The older work by James A. Woodburn, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1913. 620 p.), is still worth consultation, though it is not a biography in the modern manner.

3369. Dodd, William E. Jefferson Davis. Philadelphia, G. W. Jacobs, 1907. 396 p. (American crisis biographies) 8–820 E467.1.D26D8. Bibliography: p. [384]–385.

A sympathetic and relatively brief narrative of the tragic life of Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), soldier, planter, United States Senator, and President of the Confederate States of America. Davis is shown to have derived a love of order and discipline from his West Point training; he was also a man of deep affection for his family. His most salient characteristic, clearly manifested in public office, was his loyalty to his friends, whom he loaded with favors and defended at all times. Attention is given to his leadership of the Southern rights forces inthe Senate. As Chief Executive of the Confederacy he was not as effective as his wishes and abilities permitted, because of the jealousy of the seceded states for their sovereignty. Much attention is also given to his decisions affecting the operations of the Southern armies. Having spent two years in a Federal prison after the collapse of the Confederacy, Davis retired to private life, promoting the rebuilding of the Southern economy, but only occasionally appearing to make a speech. A more detailed but as yet incomplete biography is Hudson Strode’s Jefferson Davis, [v. 1] American Patriot, 1808–1861 (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1955. xx, 460 p.)

3370. Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Antislavery origins of the Civil War in the United States. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1939. 143 p. 39–21131 E449.D87

"List of additional readings": p. 131–134. "Selected bibliography of proslavery and antislavery publications": p. 135–139.

Lectures delivered on the Commonwealth Foundation at University College, London, which analyze "the abolition indictment of slavery and trace the steps by which the defense of the institution forced men to proceed from a general discussion of the subject to a war against it." The antislavery movement is divided into three periods: The first (1787–1833) centered about the activities of the racist American Colonization Society for promoting the deportation of free Negroes to Liberia. The second (1833–39) was marked by the rise of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a clarification of the principles of antislavery doctrine. Slavery’s loss of national approval, the rallying of the South to its defense, and the flight of abolitionists from slave to free states all made slavery a sectional issue. In the third (1839–61) manumission became a political question with the formation of the Liberty Party by the antislavery forces, and the major parties became sectional parties vying for control of the Federal Government. The South’s refusal to permit outside influence to set in motion economic and social forces in favor of constitutional abolition is regarded as the decisive factor in bringing about secession and war.

3371. Dumond, Dwight Lowell. The secession movement, 1860–1861. New York, Macmillan, 1931. 294 p. 31–30548 E440.5.D88. Bibliography: p. 273–286.

This is one of those historical studies which derive their value from carefully delimiting the field of investigation, and confining their attention to what lies within it. In this University of Michigan dissertation Professor Dumond aimed "to state the premises upon which the several groups of Southerners justified resistance to the Federal Government, and to trace the process of secession." He is aware that slavery was the bone of contention, and that vast economic and social interests were involved, but he is concerned with the expression of these in a Federal system of government under a written constitution. "The Republicans affirmed the right and duty of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories. The Southern-rights men denied it to Congress, to the territorial legislatures, and to the people of a territory until they framed an organic law preparatory to admission as a state." This was the issue which split the Democratic convention, brought about the election of a Republican President, kept the Southern leaders from acquiescence in this result, and frustrated the various attempts to work out a compromise. The author extracts the constitutional interpretations implicit in the course of events from April 1860 to April 1861 with great penetration.

3372. Dunning, William Archibald. Reconstruction, political and economic, 1865–1877. New York, Harper, 1907. xvi, 378 p. (The American Nation: a history. v. 22) 7–24164 E178.A54, v. 22

"Critical essays on authorities": p. [324]–357.

The Reconstruction era is here seen not merely as a time when the victorious North imposed its will upon the defeated South, but as a time marked by a realignment of national powers and a readjustment of political forces which accompanied recovery from the wounds of civil war. It is this national, rather than Southern, transformation which occupies Professor Dunning here. The rival policies of the President and Congress in regard to Reconstruction and national administration are discussed in the light of their effect upon the Southern state governments and their colored and white populations. While social, economic, and political conditions in the country as a whole left much to be desired, public attention came to be focused upon the irresponsible exploitation of Negro suffrage in the South, and on the spread of corruption in the Federal Government which political adversaries called "Grantism." The final chapters deal with the resurgence of the South, the nullification of Negro suffrage, the exposure of scandals throughout the administration, and the questionable election of 1876 and its aftermath. Professor Dunning’s seven Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics (New York, P. Smith, 1931. 397 p.) deal principally with the constitutional and governmental aspects of Reconstruction.

3373. Eaton, Clement. A history of the Southern Confederacy. New York, Macmillan, 1954. 351 p. 54–8772 E487.E15

Mr. Eaton’s purpose is to "delineate the changes which occurred in the society of the Old South under the impact of war." The secession movement was a conservative revolt, "in that the South would not accept the 19th century," and all segments of society were of necessity deeply affected by the progress and fortunes of the war. Attention is focused upon the morale of the army and of the civilian population, and the eventual decline of the will to resist. The role of women, the attrition of cultural institutions, the attitude of Negroes, and the personalities of civil and military leaders are described, and there are summaries of Confederate strategy and logistics. Mr. Eaton has drawn upon letters, diaries, and other personal narratives in his effort to illustrate the "human drama" of the Confederacy. Similar in scope, treatment, and thesis, and even more detailed, is E. Merton Coulter’s The Confederate States of America (no. 4076).

3374. Fite, Emerson David. Social and industrial conditions in the North during the Civil War. New York, P. Smith, 1930. 318 p. 30–26614 HC105.6.F6 1930

First published in 1910.

The considerable literature on civil society in the Confederacy is matched by a surprising dearth of titles for the situation north of the battle lines. The present volume, originally published over 45 years ago, is largely concerned with the wartime economic boom, in which agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and commerce all participated, and in which capital and labor both shared. It also contains chapters on the progress, notwithstanding heavy Federal taxation, in municipal improvements, on the continuing foundation and endowment of colleges in spite of reduced attendance in them and in the high schools, on the prevalence of luxurious consumption and entertainment as usual which so outraged many an editorialist, and on the huge effort of organized charities to relieve the miseries, hardships, and dislocations caused by the war.

3375. Fladeland, Betty L. James Gillespie Birney: slaveholder to abolitionist. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1955. 323 p. 55–13997 E340.B6F55. Bibliography: p. 295–315.

Birney (1792–1857) was the son of a wealthy slaveowner of Danville, Kentucky, and in 1818 moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he established a successful law practice, acquired a nearby plantation, and entered state politics. In the course of the next decade he was converted to Presbyterianism and acquired a strong conviction of the evil of slavery and the duty of acting to end it. In 1830 he joined the American Colonization Society, and two years later became one of its agents. By 1834 he was ready to emancipate his own slaves and ally himself with the American Anti-Slavery Society. His attempts to publish an antislavery journal in Kentucky led to the usual menaces, and his withdrawal to Ohio. He served as corresponding secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society and was the candidate of the Liberty Party for President, passively in 1840 and actively in 1844, when he received 62,300 popular votes. An accident followed by a stroke eliminated him from public life in the following year. What an Alabama newspaper called his "retrograde progression" from slaveholder to colonizationist to abolitionist makes him one of the most interesting of the antislavery leaders. Miss Fladeland emphasizes the religious motives of his later career, and the sacrifices which he willingly incurred in their behalf.

3376. Fleming, Walter L., ed. Documentary history of Reconstruction, political, military, social, religious, educational & industrial, 1865 to the present time. Cleveland, A.H. Clark, 1906–7. 2 v. 6–39739 E668.F58

Walter Lynwood Fleming (1874–1932), an Alabaman by birth, was probably the best known of William A. Dunning’s pupils at Columbia University, where he took his Ph.D. in 1904. He taught history at West Virginia University, Louisiana State University, where he is commemorated by an annual lectureship in Southern history, and from 1917 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The present compilation, with nearly 950 pages of text, has been regarded as a first-rate authority since its initial publication; a micro-offset reproduction was issued by Peter Smith in 1950. Volume I is chiefly concerned with the evolution of the Reconstruction policies of the Federal Government, and volume II with their concrete working out in the South, "with special reference to race relations, political morality, and economic, educational and religious matters." The phrase "to the present time" in the title means that materials on later conditions traced to Reconstruction policies, or on later reversals of such policies, are included in some chapters. The documents, most of which are extracts and relatively brief, include state constitutions, Federal and state laws, Congressional documents, a wide range of contemporary publications including Southern newspapers, personal statements from a variety of sources, and previously unpublished pieces from the papers of President Johnson and the records of the War Department. The chapters are largely topical, andeach opens with a brief introduction by the editor. Impressive as the compilation is, it is only reasonable to suppose that Dr. Fleming’s conviction that Reconstruction was an abomination vindictively imposed upon the white people of the South had some influence in his selection of materials.

3377. Fleming, Walter L. The sequel of Appomattox; a chronicle of the reunion of the States. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1921. 332 p. (The Chronicles of America series, v. 32) 22–12154 E173.C56, v. 32 E668.F62

"Bibliographical note": p. 305–307.

An economical and closely knit narrative of the Radical Republicans’ triumph and the decade during which their system of white disfranchisement was imposed upon the South by military rule. The moral and intellectual results were more permanent than the material ones of debt and impoverishment: "the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end," and "there was a marked change in Southern temperament toward the severe." The restoration of home rule brought in a long period of political stagnation, the result of fear "lest a developing democracy make trouble with the settlement of 1877."

3378. Freeman, Douglas Southall. The South to posterity; an introduction to the writings of Confederate history. New York, Scribner, 1939. 235 p. 39–28978 Z1242.5.F85

Bibliographical references in "Notes" (p. 205–216); "A Confederate book shelf": p. 217–221.

Dr. Freeman’s attempts to satisfy readers of Gone with the Wind (no. 1619) and other Civil War novels of the 1930’s who desired to go on to more serious fare, led to the present "brief history of Confederate history." Letters and diaries written during the war, the memoirs of participants both military and civil, noteworthy controversies in which the war was refought by the surviving leaders, the "matchless splendor" of the Official Records of the Rebellion (no. 3697) together with a few supplemental documentary publications, and the interpretations of European historians are reviewed. Its depth of knowledge and finish of style, which must make this one of the most readable and rewarding works of bibliography ever written, have made many a convert to the glamor of the Lost Cause.

3379. [Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Francis Jackson Garrison] William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879; the story of his life told by his children. New York, Century Co., 1885–89. 4 v. 11–14856 E449.G2546

3380. Nye, Russel B. William Lloyd Garrison and the humanitarian reformers. Boston, Little, Brown [1955] 215 p. (The Library of American biography) 55–7470 E449.G2558

The comprehensive study of Garrison by his sons, providing a month-by-month account of his life through reprints of the majority of his letters, articles, and speeches, has been the primary source for all subsequent Garrison biographies, such as Lindsay Swift’s William Lloyd Garrison (Philadelphia, G. W. Jacobs, 1911. 412 p.). The sons’ sympathetic biography describes Garrison’s impoverished youth in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he was apprenticed to a local newspaper editor and himself entered the craft as the editor of the local Free Press in 1826. In 1828 he took up, among other crusades, the cause of the immediate and complete manumission of the South’s slaves. After a period which included lecture tours and a stay in jail, Garrison in 1830 founded the Liberator, the foremost emancipation journal. His advocacy of pacifism and nonresistance did not prevent his being mobbed during several speaking engagements. By 1861 he was generally regarded as the leader of the abolitionists, and he hailed secession, which he thought would teach the South a lesson, but not the war. On the ratification of the 13th amendment Garrison refused a 23d term as president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and ceased publishing the Liberator. During his remaining years he turned his reformist energies to writing and preaching on behalf of free trade, women’s rights, and other causes. Dr. Nye’s brief volume makes Garrison’s religious faith the central fact in his career, and likens his role to a guilty conscience of the North.

3381. Hart, Albert Bushnell. Slavery and abolition, 1831–1841. New York, Harper, 1906. xv, 360 p. (The American Nation: a history, v. 16) 6–24128 E178.A54

"Critical essay on authorities": p. [324]–343.

This contribution to the American Nation series by its editor has of late several times been described as obsolete or outmoded. It is listed here because, while more recent studies have done much to broaden our knowledge of the genesis and bases of abolitionism, and the details of plantation slavery, none has the same broad scope and balanced treatment. Here, in one modest-sized volume, is a description of slavery as an economic system and a way of life; the late attempt of the slave interest to find a theoretical justification for it; the ideas and activities of the abolitionists; and the impingement of abolitionism upon national politics and international relations through 1840. Hart has been said to overemphasize the importance of W. L. Garrison,but in chapter XXI he offers evidence "which most conclusively shows how little Garrison is entitled to be taken as the typical or the chief abolitionist." He observes that down to 1840 the abolitionists had achieved practically nothing of a tangible kind, but that they had nevertheless "laid hold of a principle without which the republic could not exist—the principle, namely, that free discussion is the breath of liberty; and that any institution which could not bear the light of inquiry, argument, and denunciation was a weak and a dangerous institution."

3382. Hendrick, Burton J. Lincoln’s war Cabinet. Boston, Little, Brown, 1946. 482 p. illus. 46–7733 E456.H4

A popular but substantial account of the activities and personalities of Lincoln’s principal Civil War aides. The author credits Lincoln with genius in his appointing to Cabinet rank all his chief rivals for the Republican nomination. Each Cabinet member is described as to personality, political sympathies, contribution to the work of the Cabinet and the progress of the war, attitude toward Lincoln, role in party and national politics, and relations with fellow Cabinet members. Emphasis falls upon the efforts of Secretary of State Seward to control the Cabinet, the struggle for power between moderate and radical Republicans manifest in the debates over emancipation and McClellan’s restoration to command, the relations of the Senate with the Cabinet, and the personal antagonism between Salmon Portland Chase and Montgomery Blair, which eventually weakened the cohesiveness of the original Cabinet, and led to the replacement of several of its members.

3383. Hendrick, Burton J. Statesmen of the lost cause; Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet. Boston, Little, Brown, 1939. xvii, 452 p. illus. 39–28981 E487.H47. Bibliography: p. [433]–439.

3384. Patrick, Rembert W. Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1944. 401 p. 44–9637 E487.P3. Bibliography: p. [369]–387.

Mr. Hendrick studies the statesmanship and diplomacy of the ruling circle of the Confederacy through an analysis of the lives and personalities of its civilian leaders. While most of the South’s generals were members of the aristocracy, the Cabinet posts and important diplomatic missions were largely filled by men of humbler origin. In showing how each Cabinet member failed to achieve his official goal, with the exception of the Postmaster General, Mr. Hendrick asserts that the statesmanship of the South was inadequate for the situation at hand. Dr. Patrick, in his volume which originated as a dissertation at the University of North Carolina, provides biographies of even the least distinguished members of the Cabinet and seeks to assess their contributions and their deficiencies in relation to the Confederate war effort.

3385. Henry, Robert Selph. The story of Reconstruction. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1938. 633 p. 38–6264 E668.H516. Bibliography included in "Acknowledgments": p. 595–597.

During Reconstruction there was something going on every minute, and Mr. Henry succeeds in getting an extraordinary proportion of it into his crowded pages. Like its predecessor, The Story of the Confederacy (no. 3698), "it is not so much an attempt to enlarge the knowledge of the period treated as to organize and present it in direct narrative form." The author’s sympathies are clearly with the ex-Confederates, but his exemplary objectivity of tone allows the course of events to speak for itself. The 51 chapters are organized into 3 books: "Restoration," down to the passage of the Act of March 2, 1867, which, Congressman Garfield said, put "the bayonet at the breast of every rebel in the South"; "Reconstruction," down to the admission of reconstructed Georgia in mid-July, 1870; and "Redemption," concerning which Mr. Henry says: "The story of the last six years of the period of Reconstruction is one of counter-revolution—a counter-revolution effected under the forms of law where that was possible; effected by secrecy and by guile, where that would serve; effected openly, regardless of the forms of law, with violence or the threat of violence, where that had to be. But the counter-revolution was effected, at a cost to the South and its future incalculably great, justified only by the still greater cost of not effecting it."

3386. Horn, Stanley F. Invisible empire; the story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1939. 434 p. 39–8103 E668.H78

"References": p. [421]–422.

Extensive documentary evidence employed by the author shows that the Klan had innocuous beginnings as a social dub in Pulaski, Tennessee, in December 1865, but rapidly grew into a powerful political league with the avowed purpose of protecting the South’s white population at a time when they seemed to be without governmental support and in danger of subjection by their former slaves. Mr. Horn sets forth many details of the organization and methods of the Klan as it steadily increased in scope and in the violence of its attempts to restore the prewar position of the Southern whites. Mr.Horn believes in the essential honesty of the Klan’s members, who realized the inherent dangers of such an extralegal agency, and "ceased its use as soon as it had served their purpose, their original objectives fairly well attained." Most of the book is devoted to a state-by-state examination of the Klan’s activities and their effects upon Southern Negroes and whites, the Federal Government, and the local civil and military administration.

3387. Hyman, Harold Melvin. Era of the oath; Northern loyalty tests during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954. 229 p. 54–7108 E458.8.H9. Bibliography: p. [208]–222.

3388. Dorris, Jonathan Truman. Pardon and amnesty under Lincoln and Johnson; the restoration of the Confederates to their rights and privileges, 1861–1898. Introd. by J. G. Randall. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1953. xxi, 459 p. 53–13363 E668.D713. Bibliography: p. [423]–437.

Dr. Hyman’s "era of the oath" extends from April 1861, when, on the motion of Attorney General Bates, all employees of the Departments were required to take the oath of allegiance anew, to May 1884, when Representative S. S. Cox of New York finally succeeded in his campaign to bring about the repeal of the surviving test oaths from the Civil War. During this time they had been imposed for a diversity of purposes, but, the author thinks, had increasingly become a mere means for the Radical Republicans in Congress to identify and reward their own partisans. The book is written with the loyalty oaths applied to academic personnel after World War II in mind, and heaps up evidence to show that the oaths of 1861–84 failed as a means of determining loyalty, and that they operated to keep the honorable and conscientious out of office or franchise, and let the unscrupulous in. With this animus, it is hardly fair to the oath of future loyalty as used by President Lincoln, and, after his initial period of vindictiveness, by President Johnson in restoring the states of the Confederacy to the Union with their old ruling class still in charge. Four blood-stained years of civil war were to be forgotten in exchange for a simple pledge of future good behavior—conciliation could hardly go much further. This salient fact is also obscured in Dr. Dorris’ Pardon and Amnesty, because of his somewhat naïve conviction that "the authorities at Washington" had no warrant for giving the seceders "the odious appellations of ’rebels’ and ’traitors.’" The real proscription came when the congressional majority succeeded in writing their "ironclad test oath" into the 14th Amendment, and, by substituting a retrospective for a prospective oath, excluded the former Confederates from franchise and office. Dr. Dorris’ volume puts in order for the first time the complex facts concerning the status of the active Confederates, in the eyes of the Federal Government, from the initial secessions to the final repeal of disability under the 14th Amendment on June 8, 1898. There are special treatments of the cases of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, and the general course of events in North Carolina.

3389. Jenkins, William Sumner. Proslavery thought in the Old South. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1935. 381 p. ([The University of North Carolina. Social study series]) 35–15259 E441.J46. Bibliography: p. 309–358.

Soon after the Missouri crisis of 1820 the Old South began to produce a voluminous body of theoretical and polemical writing in defense of slavery, which by 1835 had acquired the status of orthodoxy within the section, and which continued to accumulate even after the outbreak of war in 1861, and down to the collapse of the Confederacy. In the present volume Professor Jenkins aims "to indicate the various thought trends, to evaluate their significance, and to estimate their weight in the entire body of pro-slavery thought." He considers in turn theories of the nature, origin, and legal basis of slavery; of slavery’s relation to the State, the Constitution, and republican government; of the moral and religious justification of slavery; of the racial basis of slavery (including the "plural origin" doctrine, which made the Negro a separate and not necessarily human species); and of slavery as an ordering of social classes and economic production. He finds that the defense of slavery was so elaborated in the thought of antiquity and the Middle Ages that the theorists of the Old South could draw upon these sources at length, and actually contributed little that was original. "The misfortune to the South was that its mental power was taken out of other fields of endeavor at a time when it could have been most fruitful in the development of a higher civilization."

3390. Lincoln, Abraham. Collected works. The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, Illinois. Roy P. Basler, editor; Marion Dolores Pratt and Lloyd A. Dunlap, assistant editors. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1953–55. 9 v. illus. 53–6293 E457.91 1953

CONTENTS.—1. 1824–1848.—2. 1848–1858.—3. 1858–1860.—4. 1860–1861.—5. 1861–1862.—6. 1862–1863.—7. 1863–1864.—8. 1864–1865.—Index.

3391. Angle, Paul M., ed. The Lincoln reader. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1947. 564 p. illus. 47–30067 E457.A58. Bibliography: p. [544]–547.

3392. Thomas, Benjamin P. Abraham Lincoln, a biography. New York, Knopf, 1952. xiv, 548, xii p. illus. 52–6425 E457.T427 1952.

Bibliography: p. [523]–548.

3393. Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln; the war years. With 414 halftones of photographs and 249 cuts of cartoons, letters, documents … New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1939. 4 v. 39–27998 E457.4.S36

3394. Randall, James G. Lincoln, the President. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1945–55. 4 v. illus. (American political leaders) 45–10041 E457.R2

Includes bibliographies.

CONTENTS.—v. 1–2. Springfield to Gettysburg.—v. 3. Midstream.—v. 4. Last full measure.

3395. Basler, Roy P. The Lincoln legend; a study in changing conceptions. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1935. 335 p. illus. 35–13765 E457–B35 Z8505.B31

Thesis (Ph. D.)—Duke University, 1931.

"A classified bibliography of poetry, fiction, and drama dealing with Lincoln": p. 309–[327].

In 1857 Lincoln (1809–1865) was a fairly successful attorney of Springfield, Illinois, whose most profitable client was the Illinois Central Railroad. He had only recently returned to politics as a Republican after a retirement of some years; his earlier Whig career had included four terms in the Illinois Legislature and one in the U. S. House of Representatives (1847–49). In 1858 he contested S. A. Douglas’ seat in the U. S. Senate, and won national celebrity if not the election from the set debates in which they engaged throughout the State. He was still a minor candidate when the Republican Convention met at Chicago in 1860, but the more famous leaders eliminated each other, and Lincoln as the Republican candidate carried the electoral college against a Democratic Party now split into fragments. Eleven of the fifteen slave states made his election the occasion for secession, and the retiring administration allowed them to organize their military resources without the least molestation. Resorting to arms to maintain the Union under such handicaps, Lincoln had to conduct a four years’ war, of which the first two were largely frustration; and when victory was at last secure, he was assassinated by a mad actor. Lincoln’s failure to domineer or engage in histrionics led most of his contemporaries to realize his greatness only in retrospect, but the popular instinct which has picked him out as one of the two greatest Americans, and has made him the lay saint of the democratic faith, is as sound as it is persistent. The foundation work, both in collecting Lincoln’s writings and in writing his life and times, was performed in the last century by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The first task has been recently completed in a quite definitive manner, in the Collected Works edited by Dr. Basler under the auspices of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Supplementary in some degree is David C. Mearns’ The Lincoln Papers: the Story of the Collection, with Selections to July 4, 1861 (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1948. 2 v. (xvii, 681 p.)), but unfortunately Lincoln had accumulated very little down to 1860. Paul M. Angle’s A Shelf of Lincoln Books: A Critical, Selective Bibliography of Lincolniana (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1946. xvii, 142 p.) is a uniquely helpful guide to Lincoln literature down to its date, but of course cannot serve for the enormous output of the last dozen years. Dr. Angle’s Lincoln Reader is an anthology of biographical materials concerning Lincoln, including both contemporaries and later writers, skillfully pieced together with some connective matter by the compiler. The late Benjamin P. Thomas, in Portrait for Posterity: Lincoln and His Biographers (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1947. xvii, 329 p.), offers penetrating estimates of attitudes and outlooks, especially of Lincoln’s earlier biographers. Mr. Thomas went on to write his own biography, entered above; since its appearance it has been generally acclaimed as the best-balanced and most thoroughly informed one-volume life; but it is sometimes not very apparent that the subject was a great man. Mr. Sandburg’s War Years is a vivid and tremendous panorama of Lincoln’s Washington, but both it and his earlier Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1926. 2 v.) are for readers with leisure and patience. There is now a one-volume condensation of both: Abraham Lincoln, the Prairie Years and the War Years (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1954. xiv, 762 p.). The late Professor Randall’s Lincoln, the President is a work of immense scholarship, and probably treats its subject as objectively as anyone could whose sympathies were wholly with the aristocracy of the Old South. Professor Richard N. Current, who completed Dr. Randall’s fourth volume, has also made a one-volume condensation, chiefly from those parts "which deal primarily with Lincoln the man and with his personal relationships": Mr. Lincoln (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1957. 392 p.). Dr. Basler’s The Lincoln Legend aims "to show how poets, writers of fiction, dramatists, and occasionally biographers have, withthe help of the folk-mind, created about Lincoln a national legend or myth which in conception is much like the hero-myths of other nations." Other biographies, documentary publications, special studies, and monographs are so numerous that space equal to the whole of this section could readily be filled with them.

3396. Meade, Robert Douthat. Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate statesman. New York, Oxford University Press, 1943. 432 p. 43–11218 E467.1.B4M4

"Select bibliography": p. 415–417.

Born in the British West Indies of Jewish parents, Benjamin (1811–1884) had three distinguished careers in one lifetime. After growing up in South Carolina, he settled in New Orleans and commenced his career as a leader of the American bar and as a legislator. His natural conservatism led him to join the Whigs, who in 1852 sent him to the U. S. Senate, where he worked for national expansion to increase the South’s strength. After 1856 he became a Democrat and joined in the defense of Southern rights, and was among the first to advocate secession. His friendship with Jefferson Davis brought about his appointment as Attorney General of the Confederacy, and then as Secretary of War in September 1861. His career as Confederate statesman was his least fortunate, since he never had the confidence of the masses and was made a scapegoat for Confederate military failures. In 1862 he transferred to the Department of State, directing the Confederacy’s desperate but vain efforts to obtain diplomatic recognition from the European powers. His third career began in 1866, following the Confederacy’s collapse, when he fled to England and rapidly became a brilliant and successful barrister, limiting himself to cases before the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

3397. Milton, George Fort. The eve of conflict; Stephen A. Douglas and the needless war. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1934. 608 p. illus. 34–36084 E415.9.D73M5. Bibliography: p. [571]–580.

A sympathetic study which in two chapters passes over the youth and early career of Douglas (1813–1861) so as to concentrate upon his service as Democratic Senator from Illinois in years of almost unintermitted sectional crisis (1847–61). Douglas, his private utterances show, regarded slavery as "a curse beyond computation," but as one shielded by the Constitution from political interference. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which unleashed the later stages of the crisis and for which Douglas accepted full responsibility, was introduced primarily because Chicago and the Northwest needed a railroad to the Pacific, and could not get one before the political organization of the vast Platte country, which by the 1850’s was long overdue. Southern Congressmen insisted upon equal rights for slaveowners in Kansas and Nebraska up to their admission as states, and Douglas, needing Southern votes and regarding the establishment of slavery in them as an economic impossibility, acquiesced. Thereafter he defended the measure as a genuinely democratic settlement, and strove to preserve the Union in spite of the extremists of either side, his unremitting efforts leading to his premature breakdown and death. At the close of 1857 Douglas, by denouncing the proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, broke with the Buchanan administration, thereby becoming increasingly estranged from the Southern fights leaders. Milton agreed with Alexander H. Stephens (no. 3415) that "if the extremists of the South had not prevented, Douglas would have prevailed; the Civil War would not have occurred."

3398. Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union. New York, Scribner, 1947. 2 v. illus. 47–11072 E415.7.N4

CONTENTS.—V. 1. Fruits of manifest destiny, 1847–1852. A note on sources (p. 561–562).—v. 2. A house dividing, 1852–1857.

3399. Nevins, Allan. The emergence of Lincoln. New York, Scribner, 1950. 2 v. illus. 50–9920 E415.7.N38

CONTENTS.—v. 1. Douglas, Buchanan, and party chaos, 1857–1859.—v. 2. Prologue to civil war, 1859–1861. Bibliography (p. 491–506).

The first two installments of what is designed to be a large-scale history of the Civil War era. Professor Nevins believes that the Civil War could have been avoided had the people and their leaders acted together in solving the problems of slavery, sectional irritation, and the correct relations between the races. The conflict between the North and the South is viewed as essentially one between the rising force of national homogeneity and the declining influence of regionalism, and is shown to have gotten out of hand as it progressively preoccupied the passions rather than the reason of all Americans. Cultural and economic as well as political developments are traced to convey a complete picture of the America of the times when sectionalism took such a firm grip on men’s tempers that civil war had to determine the future position of the Negro race in America. As the author shows, the Presidency, under Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, was never more devoid of initiative and leadership—at a time when such qualities were indispensable. Onone point the author is emphatic: "of all the monistic explanations for the drift to war, that posited upon supposed economic causes is the flimsiest." Professor Nevins has used contemporary sources throughout in the form of speeches, diaries, letters, and periodicals.

3400. Nichols, Roy F. The disruption of American Democracy. New York, Macmillan, 1948. xviii, 612 p. illus. 48–4344 E436.N56. Bibliography: p. 565–589.

Describes the progressive debilitation of the Democratic Party, called the "American Democracy" in the 19th century, during the years 1856–61. The author treats at length the party conventions of 1856 and 1860, the personal quarrels of leading politicians, the influence of sectional sentiments upon their actions, the splinter parties breaking off from the Democracy, and the relationship of the Democracy to Congress and to the opposition parties. The party itself is examined in the relations of its voters, machines, and leaders both on national and state levels. The Democracy is credited with working to establish coöperative government; however, "deeply affected by the shocks of the collisions occurring within the society in which it operated and of which it was a part, the party failed to overcome the divisive attitudes and was shattered." War came as a result of this failure. The book continues into a more critical period the study of the party which served as the author’s doctoral dissertation at Columbia University: The Democratic Machine, 1850–1854 (New York, Columbia University, 1923. 248 p.).

3401. Nye, Russel B. Fettered freedom; civil liberties and the slavery controversy, 1830–1860. East Lansing, Michigan State College Press, 1949.273 p. illus. 49–3656 JC599.USN9

"Bibliography of sources": p. 253–269.

Analyzes the controversy between the North and South arising from divergent interpretations of the degree to which men may enjoy their natural and constitutional rights by tracing the history of the attempts to suppress the abolitionist movement. During their agitation to arouse the Nation against slavery, the abolitionists were subjected to mob violence, censorship, unconstitutional interpretations of the laws, discrimination in regard to employment, and other curtailments of civil rights— "the freedoms belonging to the citizen as an individual and as a member of society." From evidence in the form of contemporary newspaper accounts, court and police records, and diaries, the author shows that the deprivation of the abolitionists’ civil rights won for them a large body of supporters "who thought less of the wrongs of the slave than of the rights of the white man." The abolitionists were able to point out that the true issue of the sectional struggle was the extent to which civil rights may be curtailed in the interests of the majority.

3402. Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. American Negro slavery; a survey of the supply, employment and control of Negro labor as determined by the plantation régime. New York, Appleton, 1918. 529 p. 18–11187 E441.P549

3403. Stampp, Kenneth M. The peculiar institution: slavery in the ante bellum South. New York, Knopf, 1956. 435, xiii p. 56–5800 E441.S8

"Manuscripts consulted, and their locations": p. 431–[436].

Professor Phillips’ book is concerned with the rise, nature, and influence of slavery in the plantation system, which it supported and to which it owed its existence. The Negro is pictured by Dr. Phillips as a childlike being culturally and intellectually inferior to the white man. This work was usually considered as a definitive treatment until the publication of Professor Stampp’s new synthesis from the same or similar sources to those employed by Dr. Phillips. Dr. Stampp assumes that "innately Negroes are only white men with black skins," and produces a history of slavery between 1830 and 1860 which incorporates the point of view of the slaves themselves, and shows in detail how the good intentions of humane masters were normally frustrated by the essential inhumanity of the system. Both refer to contemporary periodicals, letters, plantation journals, and items pertaining to the foreign and domestic slave trade; however, Dr. Phillips finds that slavery was essential to the rise of the cotton industry and beneficial, as a whole, compared with Negro life in Africa, while Dr. Stampp can find no philosophical justification for the "peculiar institution" except that it paid the master class. And it paid in the older slave states only because they raised a surplus of Negroes for sale and transportation to the newer states, from Alabama to Texas.

3404. Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. The course of the South to secession; an interpretation. Edited by E. Merton Coulter. New York, Appleton-Century, 1939. 176 p. 40–2173 F213.P65

"Prepared and published under the direction of the American Historical Association from the income of the Albert J. Beveridge memorial fund."

Lectures delivered at Northwestern University in 1932 and originally published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly are here reprinted with the author’sarticle, "The Central Theme of Southern History," prepared for the 1928 meeting of the American Historical Association. The lectures provide a historical rationale for the establishment of the Confederacy, while the theme of the article is that the South has always been and always will be the land of white supremacy. With this premise in mind, Professor Phillips’ lectures assert that the United States from its colonization had no sectional interests or sentiments which could drive them apart. It was not until the 1820’s that slavery became an issue, and then it took the form of legislation and other activities to prevent slave revolts. Professor Phillips lays the main blame for secession at the door of the abolitionists, whose efforts to force the Federal Government and the Congress to intervene in Southern affairs eventually caused violent measures on the part of Southern "fire-eaters." This danger to slavery, Professor Phillips concludes, set in motion the Southern independence movement—"a program so much in keeping with American precedent and the gospel of self-government, so legitimated by state sovereignty, so long considered, and now supported by such a multitude of conservative citizens."

3405. Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. The life of Robert Toombs. New York, Macmillan, 1913. 281 p. 13–17129 E415.9.T6P5

Toombs (1810–1885) was a planter, lawyer, and political leader of ante bellum Georgia, in the State Legislature from 1837 and in the U. S. Congress after 1844. A conservative Whig, he was ordinarily a moderate advocate of Southern rights, but at the peak of the crisis of 1850 he came out strongly in favor of the equal claim of the slave states to the territories in a series of speeches which established his fame. When the compromise was effected, he organized a Constitutional Union Party to defend it, and entered the Democratic fold only when the movement failed to spread beyond Georgia. Again he exerted a moderating influence until the crisis of 1860, when he took his stand on the Crittenden compromise measures and, on their rejection by the Republicans, came out for immediate secession. Failing to obtain election to the Presidency of the Confederate States, he was too unruly an individualist to succeed either as Secretary of State or as a brigadier-general, and was out of public life after 1862. He did not return until Reconstruction was over, but in 1877 and for a few years thereafter, until the failure of his health, was prominent in the reorganization of Georgia.

3406. Pierce, Edward L. Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner. Boston, Roberts Bros., 1877–93. 4 v. illus. 13–19830 E415.9.S9P6

CONTENTS.—1. 1811–1838.—2. 1838–1845.—3. 1845–1860.—4. 1860–1874.

Born in Boston and prepared for the bar at Harvard, Sumner (1811–1874) entered politics at the top when elected to the Senate in 1851 by a coalition of Democrats and Free-Soilers. Previously he had practiced law, traveled extensively in Europe, and delivered striking public addresses advocating world peace and equal rights for all races. He helped found the Republican Party and, after a vituperative speech on "The Crime against Kansas," was brutally assaulted on the floor of the Senate in 1856 by a South Carolina Representative whose uncle was a Senator from the same State. Sumner was absent from the Senate for the three and a half years required for his recovery. He was made chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1861 and advised the Cabinet throughout the war in matters relating to international law. Although he had been a staunch supporter of Lincoln, Sumner broke with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction policy and led the Senate in the impeachment proceedings of 1867. During the Grant administration he defeated the President’s plan to annex Santo Domingo, and was removed from his committee chairmanship for fear that he might harm the Alabama Claims negotiations then being conducted with Great Britain. He was still an erratic but powerful moral force when his heart gave out after a session of the Senate in March 1874. This biography by a devoted friend and admirer is old-fashioned and at times over-detailed, but is yet to be replaced.

3407. Pressly, Thomas J. Americans interpret their Civil War. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954. xvi, 347 p. 52–13166 E468.5.P7

Viewing the Civil War as "the classic example of a major event in the history of the United States which has been explained and interpreted in a wide variety of quite different ways," the author treats it "as a specific case history which illuminates to some extent the problems of [historical] relativism and causation." Since the war "has seemed to involve vital issues of lasting significance, it has enlisted not only the interest of successive generations but also their loyalties and their emotions," and even recent utterances have been, in the phrase of the younger O. W. Holmes, "touched with fire." The survey is carried from the reactions of Motley, Bancroft, and Prescott to the attack on Fort Sumter, down to the present "confusion of voices."

3408. Randall, James G. The Civil War and Reconstruction; with supplementarybibliography. [2d ed.] Boston, Heath, 1953. xvii, 971 p. illus., maps. 53–1027 E468.R26 1953

"Bibliographical note": p. 881–883. Bibliography: p. 885–935.

First published in 1937 to supply the lack of "one volume of recent date which brings the whole period of conflict and readjustment [1850–77] into a scholarly synthesis and distills the findings of historical scholarship for the general reader." The only change in the 1953 edition is the addition of a 10-page "Supplemental Bibliography" listing the principal books and articles which had appeared during the interval. There is no reason to suppose that this fresh material would have led the author to change his essential positions, those of a moderate "revisionist," convinced that the conflict between North and South was not "irrepressible," and that war might have been avoided if "something more of statesmanship, moderation, and understanding, and something less of professional patrioteering, slogan making, face-saving, political clamoring, and propaganda had existed on both sides." The work continues to be a widely used textbook and guide to perplexed scholars, since here alone, in brief compass, can they find not only the major political and military developments, but also "border problems, non-military development during the war, intellectual tendencies, anti-war efforts, religious and educational movements, propaganda methods, and the cacophony of voices that influenced public opinion," in a careful, lucid, and balanced treatment.

3409. Simms, Henry H. A decade of sectional controversy, 1851–1861. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1942. 284 p. 42–51250 E415.7.S6. Bibliography: p. 249–265.

The development of the Southern viewpoint during the decade preceding the Civil War is stressed. Extensive quotations from editorial comments by Northern as well as Southern newspapers illustrate the changes in popular opinion as political developments in the sectional controversy unfolded. The slavery issue was the prime manifestation of the conflict, and attention is focused on Southern sentiments and economic and political motives for its retention. This evidence shows, the author thinks, that the South was on the defensive since, in his judgment, it had no intention of extending slavery to free states, and there was no chance that slavery would take hold in the territories. Furthermore, the controversy over fugitive slaves was out of proportion to the number that actually escaped. Party rivalry is blamed as the principal cause of sectional antagonism, which was unduly magnified by vituperation and vilification on the part of Northern and Southern leaders at a time when conciliatory statesmanship might have resolved the most serious differences.

3410. Smith, William Ernest. The Francis Preston Blair family in politics. New York, Macmillan, 1933. 2 v. illus. 33–13071 E415.9.B63S6. Bibliography: v. 2, p. 497–510.

After the Adams family, Professor Smith believes, the Blairs were the second most influential family in 19th-century American politics, participating in nearly every important event between 1828 and 1878. Francis Preston Blair (1791–1876), the Virginia-born founder of the dynasty, was a lifelong political journalist imported from Kentucky to sit in Andrew Jackson’s celebrated Kitchen Cabinet. His two sons, Montgomery (1813–1883) and Frank P. Blair (1821–1875), began their political careers in Missouri as Free-Soil Democrats. Like their father, the sons adhered to whatever party at a given time best reflected their political views. All three became Republicans by 1860 and remained so until their views on Reconstruction clashed with the Radicals, which led them to return to the Democrats by 1868. Frank became a Congressman from Missouri, and on the outbreak of the Civil War led the struggle to keep Missouri in the Union, and afterward had a stormy career as a major general. As a Democrat, Frank was the party’s nominee for the Vice Presidency in 1868 and served as a Senator until 1873. Montgomery Blair’s career was primarily that of a judge and outstanding attorney until 1861, when he was taken into Lincoln’s Cabinet as Postmaster General. In 1864 he was ousted in consequence of an ultimatum from the Radicals in Congress. After a brief period as a Liberal Republican, Montgomery threw his weight behind the Democrats, going so far as to found a newspaper which challenged the validity of Rutherford B. Hayes’ election.

3411. Stryker, Lloyd Paul. Andrew Johnson, a study in courage. New York, Macmillan, 1930. xvi, 881 p. illus. 33–1228 E667.S924

"Authorities and abbreviations used": p. 838–844.

3412. Winston, Robert W. Andrew Johnson, plebeian and patriot. New York, Holt, 1928. xvi, 549 p. illus. 28–7534 E667.W78. Bibliography: p. 529–540.

Mr. Stryker’s favorable appraisal of the life of President Johnson (1808–1875) is designed to eliminate misunderstandings about the man and his actions and policies which had persisted in history books and the popular mind since the days of Johnson’s impeachment (March–May 1868). Here Johnson is described as a lifelong Unionist, bornin Raleigh, North Carolina, who rose from the humblest beginnings to service as Democratic Governor and Senator from Tennessee before the Civil War. His extreme loyalty to the Union drew the notice of President Lincoln, who appointed him military governor of free Tennessee in 1861, where he administered the first of Lincoln’s Reconstruction schemes until his election as Vice President in 1864. Having succeeded to the Presidency, Johnson, after considering the alternative, felt compelled to carry out Lincoln’s moderate and wise plans for the rehabilitation of the South—much to the wrath of the Radical Republicans, who resolved to crush him. Johnson’s repeated vetoes of extremist Reconstruction legislation so enraged his opponents that impeachment proceedings were instituted in an atmosphere of virtual congressional revolt. Johnson was acquitted and, although his administration was hobbled, did what he could to moderate the vindictive treatment of the South. Such was the bitterness of the Radicals that they spared no effort to defame Johnson during the remainder of his term and of his life. Mr. Winston’s biography is a briefer treatment on the same lines and no less sympathetic. David Miller Dewitt’s The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York, Macmillan, 1903. 646 p.) is an objective and thorough account of this constitutionally unique episode.

3413. Thomas, Benjamin P. Theodore Weld, crusader for freedom. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1950. 307 p. 50–9667 E449.W46. Bibliography: p. [289]–300.

This first biography of "the greatest of the abolitionists" rescues Weld (1803–1895) from comparative obscurity. Born in Connecticut of a long line of Congregational ministers, Weld matured early, and undertook a lecture tour at the age of 17. Converted by C. G. Finney in 1823, he joined his Holy Band as an active evangelist, but for the first decade his special causes were temperance and manual labor. Not until 1833 did he concentrate upon abolition. In the following year, when he and his friends had been forced out of Lane Seminary, he became a full-time agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His active antislavery career lasted only a decade, but in the quality of his converts, who included Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and James G. Birney, and in the extent and effect of the evangelizing which he conducted or organized in the rural counties of the West, he was of unique importance. In 1841 he transferred to Washington and for two years advised and heartened the small but increasing antislavery group in Congress. In 1843 he withdrew to his farm, and returned to the public platform only once, during the Civil War, in order to rally support for the war effort. Weld avoided personal publicity of any kind, withholding his name from his antislavery writings and, so far as possible, from his other activities, and the crucial nature of his influence has been a rediscovery of recent historians.

3414. Villard, Oswald Garrison. John Brown, 1800–1859, a biography fifty years after. [Rev. ed.] New York, Knopf, 1943. 738 p. illus. 43–10611 E451.V71 1943. Bibliography: p. 599–709, [709a]–709d.

John Brown behind his whiskers looked and talked like an Old Testament prophet, and his strange and sanguinary role in the crisis years from 1856 to 1859 led to as wide a range of conflicting opinions as have ever accumulated about any historic figure. Before May 26, 1856, Brown was a migratory, debt-ridden nobody; after the killings on the Pottawatomie he was a national figure, sinister to some and to others a dauntless champion of righteousness. For the six weeks after October 16, 1859, when his attempt upon Harper’s Ferry failed, the eyes and ears of the whole Nation were focused upon him. Mr. Villard was the first to assemble the complete facts about Brown and to put them into an intelligible order; when he came to revise his work after 33 years there proved to be remarkably little to add. He continued to regard Brown as a great figure. Abraham Lincoln spoke thus in February 1860: "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution." This would be the last word save for one thing: everything Brown did about slavery was perverse, criminal, and perhaps insane; but everything he said about it had the power and the truth of an Old Testament prophet. Such a contradiction eludes formulae.

3415. Von Abele, Rudolph R. Alexander H. Stephens, a biography. New York, Knopf, 1946. xiii, 337, x p. 46–6961 E467.1.S85V6

This biography, which originated in a Columbia University dissertation, penetrates the psychological characteristics of one of the South’s leading politicians. Born on a small farm in Georgia, Stephens (1812–1883) was always physically frail, but did become a successful lawyer and amass a personal fortune. He entered politics in 1836 by election to the Georgia Legislature as a Whig. In 1843 he was sent to the U. S. House of Representatives on his reputation as a champion of state sovereignty, and later defended slavery as a "stern necessity," going so far as to advocate the renewal of the African slave trade in order to extend slave territory. When heretired from the House in 1859 he was convinced that his new party, the Democracy, had triumphed over abolitionism. When secession was being debated in Georgia, Stephens argued against it, but accepted his election as Vice President of the Confederacy on February 9, 1861, and served in that capacity throughout the war. His duties, beside presiding over the ineffectual Confederate Senate, included acting as chief negotiator with Washington for the exchange of prisoners, and for terms of peace. After the war he continued active in Georgia and national politics, returning to the House in 1872, and devoted much time to writing history and to philanthropy. "Liberty under law was his theme and his religion"; however, liberty could be enjoyed only according to one’s position in the order of society.

3416. Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, with an introd. by John T. Morse, Jr. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1911. 3 v. 38–34416 E468.W443

Preface signed: Edgar T. Welles.

CONTENTS.—1. 1861—March 30, 1864.—2. April 1, 1864–December 31, 1866.—3. January 1, 1867—June 6, 1869.

This daily chronicle of people and events is regarded by most historians as one of the most useful and reliable sources for Civil War and early Reconstruction era leaders and politics, although the author did some revising after his retirement. Welles (1802–1878), a Connecticut man who had been a Democrat until 1854, was chosen by Lincoln to represent New England in his Cabinet. The diary contains much information on his acts as Secretary of the Navy: he built a navy on an entirely new scale, raised the discipline and standards of the officers and men, and worked for the development of new weapons and tactics. Attached to the cause and personality of Lincoln, and later of Johnson, Welles may be considered the spokesman of the relatively impartial liberal Republicans. In 1874 he published an interesting little volume, Lincoln and Seward (New York, Sheldon. 215 p.), to dispel the illusion that the Secretary of State had been the brains of the administration. Much can be learned of the personal traits and motivations of Union leaders and the development of policies during the war and peace from Welles’ vivid characterizations of the important men with whom he came in contact. Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Navy Department, by Richard S. West, Jr. (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1943. 379 p.), is a sound biography which emphasizes his administrative achievement.

3417. Woodward, Comer Vann. Reunion and reaction; the compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction. [2d ed.] Rev. and with a new introd. and concluding chapter. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1956. 297 p. (A Doubleday anchor book, A83) 56–7531 E681.W83 1956

This work by Professor Woodward of Johns Hopkins University was originally published in 1951; the additional matter in the paperback edition is largely concerned with relating the main narrative to the earlier and later course of Southern politics. In it he completely rewrites the accepted version of the events whereby the disputed election of 1876 was resolved and a renewal of domestic strife averted. The principal evidence is to be found in the papers of President Rutherford B. Hayes, for it was Hayes’ lieutenants who devised the plan of securing all the disputed electoral votes for their candidate by driving a wedge between those "Southern redeemers" who in ante bellurn days had been conservative Whigs, and those who had been Democrats. The principal agents in this maneuver were Colonel Andrew J. Kellar of the Memphis Avalanche and General Henry Van Ness Boynton, Washington representative of the Cincinnati Gazette, and the chief bait was the promise of a Federal subsidy for the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. The Southern Congressmen in the deal abstained from the Democratic filibuster against the decision of the Electoral Commission, and Hayes became President. The North’s more idealistic war aims were thus jettisoned in order to protect "the peculiar interests and privileges of a sectional economy" built up since 1861; Reconstruction came to an abrupt end; compromise was once more the rule of American politics as it had been before 1860; and a persistent partnership between Southern Bourbons and Northeastern industrialists was inaugurated.