Civil War and Reconstruction

Rating:
Summary: The Standard on Civil War History
Review: Professor Donald provides insight into how the collective decisions of the past have led to so many of the problematic circumstances we face as a nation today. Professors Donald, Baker and Holt take the reader back to over twenty years before the beginning of the Civil War and continue through Reconstruction to examine the various factors and angles from which the entire history of the Civil War and Reconstruction is derived. The student of American History has everything needed in one concise volume to gain a working knowledge of the Civil war and Reconstruction era. This work is a well-documented, factual and detailed account of the most trying period of history our nation has seen to date. The work is accurate, comprehensive and concise. No doubt The Civil War and Reconstruction by David H. Donald will maintain a prominent place in any serious historical library for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: The Standard on Civil War History
Review: Professor Donald provides insight into how the collective decisions of the past have led to so many of the problematic circumstances we face as a nation today. Professors Donald, Baker and Holt take the reader back to over twenty years before the beginning of the Civil War and continue through Reconstruction to examine the various factors and angles from which the entire history of the Civil War and Reconstruction is derived. The student of American History has everything needed in one concise volume to gain a working knowledge of the Civil war and Reconstruction era. This work is a well-documented, factual and detailed account of the most trying period of history our nation has seen to date. The work is accurate, comprehensive and concise. No doubt The Civil War and Reconstruction by David H. Donald will maintain a prominent place in any serious historical library for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: A Thorough and Reliable History of the American Civil War
Review: Students of history would do well to begin their studies of the U.S. Civil War by reading this seminal historical text by renowned historian James Garfield Randall (1881-1953), University of Illinois professor and Lincoln biographer. Released in 1937, "The Civil War and Reconstruction" was revised by Randall's student David Herbert Donald in 1961. This is the book we are dealing with, not the further revised volume outlined in the product description.

What distinguishes this work is Randall's keen sense of historical accuracy: Although he had his own predilictions (Abraham Lincoln was his childhood hero and lifelong subject of his scholarship), he separated his early personal views from his assessment of the historical record. Anyone who has ever read books on the Civil War written before Randall's will find enough jingoism, hyperbole and finger pointing to suffice them a lifetime. What Randall aspired to, however, was a more objective and scientific analysis of history. In that, I believe, he has succeeded.

Written in an era before political correctness, this book deals with the issue of slavery honestly and forthrightly. Randall looks into the economics of slavery from Colonial times up to the Civil War, and gives a dispassionate sketch of its origins and practices. For example, consider these simple facts: That unlike the pale white indentured servants from the British Isles, who were generally physically ill equiped for working the soil in the hot and humid Southern states, African slaves were much better acclimated to the South's punishing climate, and, in fact, received better treatment than their European counterparts. The reason for this was purely economic, not altruistic: Slaves were owned, and represented a financial investment, whereas indentured servants more or less were leased and were driven hard so that plantation owners could extract every penny of value from them while they could. Yet, when I voiced these facts in a graduate school lecture hall in New York City in the early 1990s, many students glowered at me, and the professor looked like a scared rabbit, and changed the subject immediately.

What makes Randall's study of the Civil War most appealing is that although he began his career seeing the Union through rose-colored glasses (given his admiration for Lincoln) one sees that after studying the matter thoroughly, his sympathies often lie with the South, and that he regards Lincoln as a sort of tragic figure, who was torn between holding the Union together and keeping more radical elements of the Republican Congress at bay. This is significant, because it is seldom that scholars admit they are wrong.

His thesis, that the Civil War was indeed not inevitable, ought to be carefully studied by purveyors of the two prevailing -- and ignorant -- explanations of the Civil War and Lincoln's place in it. To those Southerners who declare that the Civil War was not about slavery, Randall provides copious evidence to debunk that myth. Yes, while it is true the war was not *exclusively* about slavery, Randall shows that slavery was indeed the crucible through which radicals of both sides eventually wound up taking arms against each other. He holds radical abolitionists such as John Brown and cynical Yankees as Stephen Douglas (more concerned with building a transcontinental railroad through the industrial north, partly at the expense of Southern taxation) in equal disdain. A simple study of the breakoff of the West Virginians from Virginia illustrates the concept of two economically separated nations.

Another naive, yet dangerous, view that Randall dispells is the gripe often voiced by leftists that Lincoln was no hero for ending slavery, because his primary objective was holding the Union together, even if it meant keeping slavery intact. That view drops context just as readily as does the aforementioned Southern view. According to Randall, Lincoln was a voice of moderation in the Republican party, not a rabid abolitionist. Lincoln knew that slavery could never be ended immediately without war, and indeed tried to prevent it. Randall's telling of the election of 1860 showed that while Lincoln's more moderate platform of compromise and consensus made it possible to have a mandate in the North, deep divisions within the Democrat party further exacerbated Southern suspicions that the Northerners had it in for them. The nomination of Illini Douglas caused the South to field their own candidate, John Breckenridge. John C. Bell, a pro-South candidate who wished to see the Union preserved, tried -- like Lincoln -- to appeal to calmer emotions, but made little impact. The election ended with a nation deeply divided, and though Lincoln was considered a moderate in his native North, Southerners -- who wound up with the short end of the stick from the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act -- viewed Lincoln as the veritable embodiment of abolition.

Thus, according to the politically correct, Lincoln was no puritan on this issue, and therefore of suspect motivation. In fact, though, he did represent the best practical hope of ending slavery, through attrition, rather than the hotheaded clash of swords.

Likewise does Randall paint a rational picture of Reconstruction, more informed by economics and sociology than partisan fury. I commend this volume to anyone who wants to read a well-researched and reasoned account of the Civil War. I find, on balance, Randall's attempts at objectivity to be quite fruitful. For those who 139 years later are still re-fighting the war with vitriolic fervor, they will find little in this tome to stir up spiteful emotions, pro or con. Such types will nevertheless regard Randall either as a Yankee apologist for Abe Lincoln or a pro-Southern closeted racist.

Although thoughtfully appended with excellent photographs, maps and illustrations, I additionally recommend Bruce Catton's "American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War" as a fun and informative companion general history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction.