EMANCIPATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

This book review of the above-titled book by Michael Perman consists of summaries of each subchapter and my own opinion of his analytical points concerning the reasons for the inherent conflict between presidential and Congressional perspectives on reconstruction and the internal contradictions in the northern policy of Reconstruction.

Chapter One Emancipation, 1862-1865

Prior to the death of Abraham Lincoln, the policy of the Union toward the treatment and eventual emancipation of the black slaves evolved out of the military exigencies of the Civil War rather than any coherent plan. Benjamin Butler skirted the issue by treating fugitive slaves as contraband. In other occupied areas, the military and some northern liberals experimented with various contract labor schemes. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was adopted as a war measure after other alternatives such as compensation to slaveowners and foreign colonization plans failed and "was a risky move because of its adverse effect on northern morale and the likelihood that it would stiffen southern resistance" (p. 13).

The Union Army was faced with a major refugee problem as 4 million uneducated former slaves, except for a relatively small number who joined the army, milled about aimlessly. Efforts by General William Sherman and some northern liberals to help blacks purchase land failed for lack of funds. The federal Freedmen's Bureau set up by Congress in March 1865 helped

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o the latter's impeachment which failed of passage in the Senate by one vote. Perman says that "meanwhile, the South suffered continual turmoil and uncertainty" (p.40). Having thrown down the gauntlet the South suffered the indignity of continued military rule under the Military Reconstruction Act which was finally passed and administered during the time of President Grant (1868-1874). Perman concluded that Johnson was "an embittered and obstinate politician determined to obstruct the will of Congress in its struggle to reconstruct the South" (p. 60). The Republican Party held power in the South for six years. Its principal legs of support were the carpetbaggers, northerners in the South seeking office or for humanitarian reasons, freed slaves and scalawags, or southerners who 'collaborated.' They won elections, but "troops were needed to protect the vulnerable Republican governments and to put down violence against their supporters" (p. 62). That violence was often serious, including many murders of blacks by the Ku Klux Klan, which the federal army had to intervene to suppress in 1870-1871. The basic problem was that northern-inspired Republican governments lacked legitimacy. They were viewed as the product of force and, moreov
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Approximate Word count = 1548
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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