Abstract
90CIVIL WAR HISTORY thor estimates that at one time or another, perhaps as many as 70,000 did. Some of the individuals, after all, did manage to retain their holdings, and some of the tracts secured are still held by descendants of the original owners. This is an interesting and sound study. The author has made extensive use of primary materials and has written her narrative in a very readable fashion. The work is a valuable addition to the body of Reconstruction literature. Martin Abbott Georgia College The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870-1912. By Margaret Law Callcott. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969. Pp. xv, 199. $7.95.) Dr. Callcott has taken on the difficult job of analysing a very fine, but undramatic point, the equivalent, in the theatre, of an able character actor's accepting a "thankless role," difficult and important yet muted against the panoply of larger figures. Her task, like Dewey Grantham's in his lectures on The Democratic South ( 1965), was to show that a losing party, composed in part of a minority racial group, did not lose as badly as one would gauge from a cursory glance. In fact, she argues, the Negroes of Maryland with their persistently high numbers of voters in the Republican column demonstrated strength enough to ward off Democratic disfranchisement attempts to a degree unmatched by blacks in the lower South. Yet she must conclude "Negro Marylanders, in spite of a remarkable record of responsible voting participation, were unable to advance their legitimate interests significantly or to secure full protection from harassment. . . ." The story of Maryland Republicans in the three decades after the Civil War was one of defeat after the dissolution of the wartime Union party, and desperate years of clinging to federal patronage. The party fell from office even in the staunch far west and in the rural black counties on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Not until the days of WiIlaim McKinley would the party mount a successful assault on Democratic hegemony. One might be tempted to inflate the Republican achievement in order to make more plausible Negro survival under the long years of Democratic rule. But the author never allows this to happen . She can claim that by the end of Reconstruction the Republican party "had demonstrated that it possessed a following and organizational ability capable of presenting a genuine challenge to the dominant Democratic party," while always granting that "the Democratic party retained its dominant position in the state for the next twenty-five years." In fact, one of the most stubborn impediments to Democratic success was the party's own tendency toward fragmentation during its frequent internecine struggles over, not the race issue,- but urban reform and machine politics. BOOK REVIEWS91 But Maryland, according to the author, is most important as a field for study, not so much for what it reveals about white men's parties. Democratic racism and Republican apathy differed little for Negroes. Poor schools, segregation, disfranchisement movements, and other forms of discrimination were always with them, seeming to increase during the times of the greatest black political participation. Rather, the absence of terrorism and ballotbox chicanery in the state allowed "a unique opportunity for the observation of Negro political activity." Indeed , the author claims "the most important finding of this inquiry is the high level of political involvement the society's lowest socioeconomic group exhibited." One wonders, however, whether disfranchisement in Maryland might not have been successful if Negro "involvement" had been in a strong Populist movement such as those that terrified white southerners in North Carolina, Alabama, and elsewhere. Unfortunately a number of circumstances have prevented a close examination of this "socioeconomic group." Even though the author's alert plowing of election returns has allowed generalizations about gross political behavior, such a method does not reveal community action and leadership within the black world. At the same time a paucity of sources prevents all but the most impressionistic view of the Maryland Negro community. Nevertheless, the Booker T. Washington Papers in the Library of Congress might have been better used along with a few collections of ephemera in the hands of Baltimore Negroes. They shed light on...
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.