Post on 01-Jan-2016
CIVIL WAR HISTORIOGRAPHY
Michaela Crawford Reaves, Ph.D.
“Traditional” Interpretations
• Late 19th century• Radical Republicans dominated southern life• Unscrupulous carpetbaggers and scalawags
exploited the poor South; graft rampant!• Black supremacy oppressed poor white
Southerners; nothing but barbaric!• Argues race the major issue, • Reconstruction A BIG failure!• Interpretation is now considered racist.
William Archibald Dunning
• From New Jersey• 1857-1922• Defined first decades
of Reconstruction history
• Condoned KKK• Poor abused South• Evil scheming North• Child-like Negroes
Claude Bowers
• 1878-1958• Mass culture absorbed
Dunning’s ideas through The Tragic Era (fiction)
• Racial inequality necessary
Progressive Historians
• Early 20th century• Second American Revolution• Largest issue: ECONOMICS• Dominant northern capitalists exploit
defeated South• South still exploited, but for different
reasons, evil plot nonetheless.• A handful of scholars dispute this view.
Charles A. Beard
• 1874-1948• Dominant northern
capitalists exploit defeated South
• Economic interpretation beginning in 1923
• Focused on material self interest, not ideology
W.E.B. DuBois
• 1868-1963• Brought African
American experience to the table
• Wrote Black Reconstruction
• Communist• Reconstruction had a
good side, benefits.
Vernon Parrington
• 1871-1929• Saw everything in
terms of culture and American idealism
• Jeffersonian• Wanted to separate
states’ rights from slavery issue
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
• 1877-1934• Emphasis on race
overshadowed by Beardians
• Contended slaves were treated well
• Examined class in South
James G. Randall
• 1881-1953• Argued Civil War a
result of failed statesmanship
• Analyzed administration and constitutional issues
• Wrote Lincoln and the South
Avery O. Craven
• 1885-1980• Believed Civil War
unavoidable• Lincoln too
conservative. Failed to provide adequate punishment for “rebels,” and did not offer sufficient guaranty of Black rights
Alrutheus A. Taylor
• 1893-1955
• African American historian
• Academic dean at Fisk
• Study of African-Americans
• Destroying stereotypes of 'sambo,' the ignorant of the carpetbaggers."
Francis Butler Simkins
• 1897-1966
• Helped lay foundation for modern Civil Rights movement
• First revisionist on Reconstruction 1931
• With Robert Woody examined South Carolina in Reconstruction
Revisionist Historians
• Second Reconstruction Era: 1950’s and 1960’s
• African-Americans at center of issue
• Andrew Johnson now a pig-headed racist
• Radical Republicans are GOOD guys!
• Reconstruction had positive effects!
• Revolutionary impulse thwarted
Howard K. Beale
• 1899-1959
• A successful attempt by northern moneyed industrialists using the Republican party for their own ends.
• Remove southern ruling class
• Beardian self-interest• Tends to disregard
issues of Civil Rights
LaWanda F. Cox
• 1909-2005 • Moderate Republicans
spearheaded Reconstruction
• Not economics but race relations the major issue
• Genuine conviction for legal equality
Kenneth Stampp
• 1912-• Refutes Dunning• Reconstruction a
success• Last “great crusade of
19th century reformers.”
• Issue: too many secondary sources
C. Vann Woodward
• 1908-1999• Reconstruction was
not revolutionary • Very conservative• Strange Career of Jim
Crow (1955)• Dissertation advisor:
Howard K. Beale
John Hope Franklin
• 1915-• Focused on African-
American contribution• “And what historians
have written tells as much about their own generation as about the Reconstruction period itself.”
• Civil Rights influence
Post-revisionism
• 1970’s
• Racial prejudice compromised efforts to aid freedmen.
• Reconstruction was “superficial”
• New South just continuation of Old South
• Reconstruction was conservative and not revolutionary at all!
Leon Litwack
• 1929• Been in the Storm So
Long• Whites indifferent• Freedmen succeeded• Focus on black-white
relations analyzing tensions and dependence
Michael Les Benedict
• No Radical Reconstruction, a misnomer
• Preserve the Constitution, first and foremost
• Neo-Abolitionist• Political science
interpretation
Michael Perman
• Moderate Republicans sought cooperation with southern whites
• Vulnerable to Southern obstructionism
• Southern leaders disenfranchised blacks and poor whites with complicity of northern Republican Progressives
Cultural History
• Late 80’s into 90’s• Emphasis on what certain groups did• Did Blacks in power ignore Black issues?• Issue not integration/segregation, but land.• Need comparative studies• Alienation ignored in favor of nationalism• Class formation and transformation, not race
Joel Williamson
• Reconstruction a time of progress for African Americans
• The Crucible of Race (1984)
• Freedmen in South Carolina did amazingly well
• Currently at Chapel Hill, North Carolina
James McPherson
• Argues Reconstruction does not end in 1877, but 1890 with last “bloody shirt” bill
• Sectional and racial issues ceased to be a national event.
Eric Foner
• Marxist• Issue is changing class
relationships• Use of law to preserve
plantation system and control of labor
• Economic role pertained to labor control
• http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/index.html
The End