Radical Reconstruction: The Second Civil War

DVD REVIEW

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, Two Parts Revolution and Reaction, PBS, 2004

Back in the days of my personal ‘pre-history’ the Reconstruction period directly after the American Civil War ended in 1865 was cast as the time of the scalawags, carpetbaggers, Black Codes and ultimately after a determined fight by the ‘right’ people in the South ‘redemption’. In short a time of shame in the American experience and, at least implicitly, a racist slap at blacks and their supporters. Well so much for that nonsense.

There certainly was plenty that went wrong during radical reconstruction in the South but the conventional high school history textbooks never got into the whole story. Nor did they want to. The whole story is that until fairly recently this radical reconstruction period was the most democratic period in the South in American history, for white and black alike. Previously, I have written some book reviews on this subject that led me to this documentary. This documentary goes a long way toward a better visual understanding of what went on in that period.

The first part of the Radical Reconstruction era was dominated by three basic plans that are described here in some detail; the aborted Lincoln ‘soft’ union indivisible efforts; the Johnson ‘soft’ redemption plans; and, the radical Republican ‘scorched earth’ policy toward the South. In the end none of these plans was pursued strongly enough to insure that enhanced black rights gained through legislation would lead to enlightened citizenship. The documentary presents detailed critiques of all these plans and some insights about the social and cultural mores of the country at the time that do not make for a pretty picture.

The producers spend some time trying to demystify what the radical reconstruction governments did and did not do. This is done in the usual ‘even-handed’ approach of PBS documentaries by the use of various individual life stories-a former slave, ex-Yankee officer and a woman plantation owner. That there were scandalous activities and more than enough corrupt politicians to go around goes without saying. However like most myths there is a snowball effect about how bad things really were that obliterates the very real advances for black (and some poor whites) like public education, improved roads and increased state facilities that were anathema to the planting class that formerly ruled the South.

The second part of the documentary deals with the conservative counter-revolution in order to overthrow the radical governments culminating in the well-known Compromise of 1877. The actions of that Southern rabble, rich and poor whites alike, formed in militias and other para-military operations like the Klan is certainly not pretty. Moreover it took about a century and a ‘cold’ civil war during the 1960’s to even minimally right that situation (a battle that continues to this day). For those that need an in depth, definitive study of this subject you must turn to the master Eric Foner (who is also one of the ‘talking heads’, another PBS standard practice, on screen) and his monumental Reconstruction, 1863-1877. However, if you want a shorter but nevertheless informative visual overview of Reconstruction this is your first stop.

THE BATTLE AGAINST RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

BOOK REVIEW

REDEMPTION: THE LAST BATTLE, NICOLAS LEMANN, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 2006

The Reconstruction period after the defeat of the South in the American Civil is a much disputed and misunderstood period, and in earlier times dominated by historians sympathetic to the Southern cause. Moreover, many books on the subject tend to center either on the question of the federal government’s ‘benign neglect’ and eventual abandonment of the freed slaves or on the freed slaves (and their white allies, the carpetbaggers and scalawags) incapacity to govern in place of the traditional planter oligarchy of a defeated Southern nation. Mr. Lemann’s book, although correctly paying attention to those issues, takes another tact and addresses the less well-known military actions by defeated white Southerners as a key to the failure of Reconstruction. Although this book will not replace Eric Foner’s now classic Reconstruction:1863-77 as the definitive text on the period it should have a prominent place in the academic controversy over the failures of the Reconstruction period.

If, as I believe, the American Civil War of 1861-65 was a second American Revolution consolidating the gains of the first bourgeois revolution by taking the slavery question and the question of a unitary continent-wide national government off the agenda then the Reconstruction period takes on more than a tragic or ill-advised attempt to reorder the nature of government in the South. Thus, the role of the Klu Klux Klan, White Camelia and other white militia organizations in destroying the basis for universal suffrage and economic equality by military force can be defined as a political counterrevolution, and a successful one. It is the gruesome and deadly story of this fight that plays a central role in Mr. Lemann’s narrative, particularly in the key states of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Without denying the importance of the serious mistakes and ultimate capitulation of the Federal government on the question of black emancipation, without denying the important failure of the Radical Republicans to fight for their program for the South and without denying that the condition of servitude had rendered many blacks not immediately capacity of forming and running local democratic governments one comes away from a reading of this book with the conclusion that the black liberation struggle, and not for the first time, was militarily defeated in this country. What portion this military defeat of the black liberation struggle by white reactionaries played in the overall defeat of Reconstruction the reader can decide. But it played a part. Read on.