Splendid Failure

Well...back to my book reports. Like Herself used to say: "Don't get too much of a good thing."


Michael W. Fitzgerald, “Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South ” , Ivan R. Dee, 2007; 256 pp, ISBN 978-1-5666-3794-7

This book covers those dozen years following the Civil War commonly dubbed the Reconstruction period in the South. This period of history has generally portrayed a vengeful North imposing a corrupt military dictatorship on a beaten South. Fitzgerald’s theme contends that the radical Republicans and their programs were destined to collapse as the north lost interest and the southern states were readmitted into the Union. This resulted in another century in which inequality for Southern blacks was the least of their problems.

I found this book hard to read—probably because I had too many things going on at once and could not just dedicate myself to long periods of concentration as I usually do. An alternative reason is that the book just tries to cover too much. If the reader is proficient in the history of Reconstruction, this is probably a good summary of the times. This is a much to complicated subject to cover in a 256 page book.
Anyway, this was one of those filler books I picked up at the library while waiting for my inter-library loan books to get here. To really understand “Splendid Failure” I would have to read it again—a task I will not do.
Notes:

Pg. 6: In 1860, 10 percent of the black population were free nationwide. At this time a prime male slave was worth approximately $1,800, about $40,000 in 2007 terms. Since slaves represented about one-third of the Southern population, the investment was colossal—billions of dollars. For the fourth of white families that owned slaves, concentrated in the plantation regions, this was an overriding reality.

Pg. 25: From early in the war, Lincoln began the process of reunion, setting up Unionist state governments in occupied portions of Louisiana, Virginia, Arkansas, and eventually Tennessee. In December 1863 he announced his 10 percent plan, providing that whenever that sliver of the white population pledged future loyalty, he would sanction elections and recognize the results. With Lincolns’ assassination and Andrew Johnson’s failure as a leader, this would all collapse.

Pg. 209: By the turn of the century, disfranchisement laws in the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means eliminated nearly all black voting in the ex-Confederacy. Along with these came a host of legal segregation laws and a style of political discourse that emphasized race supremacy. For the next half-century the Jim Crow South allowed the racial control most whites had sought ever since emancipation.