Reconstruction in United States History Textbooks

Abstract

ence. That incoherence leads historians ultimately to invoke either inappropriate psychological analyses (of individuals or groups) or literary flourishes about tragic flaws in the American character- all in lieu of probing the historical forces at work. In its abbreviated form, as found in many United States history surveys, that narrative conveys the sense that there were several parallel sequences of events and developments, which were largely unrelated and disconnected. Some historical periods do resist the historian's attempt to impose a coherent narrative because they were, in fact, not coherent. But, given that Reconstruction America had just fought an enormous war, which had focused its energies and resources in ways heretofore unimaginable, and that the forces set loose by that war continued to unfold in the postwar decade, incoherence seems unlikely. Three of the textbooks under review here adhere to the traditional approach. other four project strong conceptual or thematic schemes that lend order and perspective to their narrations. One may disagree with them, but there is something substantive to be debated. But even those texts that have avoided the incoherences of the conventional narrative fail adequately to account for the collapse of especially the betrayal of the political and economic aspirations of the freed people. Of the discussions of Reconstruction in these seven texts, the fourteen-page treatment in A Short History of the American Nation by John A. Garraty and Robert A. McCaughey is the most typical of the conventional narrative of the Reconstruction era; or, perhaps more accurately, it marks an incomplete transition away from what was conventional several decades ago.' Its twelve brief sections signal that its concerns are primarily with formal politics: Presidential Reconstruction, Republican Radicals, The Fourteenth Amendment, The Reconstruction Acts, Congress Takes Charge, The Fifteenth Amendment, 'Black Republican' Reconstruction, The Ravaged Land, The White Counterrevolution, Grant as President, The Disputed Election of 1876, and The Compromise of 1877.