The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (review)

Abstract

184CIVIL WAR HISTORY printed by Coleman, all from his second period of service, with the Hampton Legion in Virginia, illustrate the breakdown in morale of the Confederates in the closing months of the war. In one dark hour on December 23, 1864, Tucker told his wife: the yankes has the advanteg of us and we never can git it back un less the kind providence should smile on us and that I am a fraid he will not do we undoubtedly have the wickeddist pepai in the world in plais of ther gitting beter they git wors the young men inpatickle a fidlen and dancin and wishing the .d-d. Confederecy would go up ... we are gone pepai I am Sorrey to say it But the Lord onley knows what will be hour fait. Tucker, always hungry and dispirited, reported on February 21, 1865, that "hour men is whopped the wirst that they have ever bin." The last of the documents, Tucker's pass to return home from Appomattox "and there remain undisturbed," reads like a sigh of relief. John Y. Simon Southern Illinois University The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction. By James M. McPherson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Pp. 474. $10.00.) Whether historians viewed the abolitionists as disruptive fanatics or crusaders for freedom, the tradition of historical writing has been to concentrate on the decades before the Civil War and pay them little, if any, attention in the 1860's. James McFherson has revised this tradition. In this highly original and exciting book, he demonstrates that it was during the decade of Civil War and Reconstruction that the abolitionist crusade reached the high point of its effectiveness. He shows convincingly that the abolitionists were not only against slavery, but for equality; and that they sought to overcome the almost universal popular and scientific belief in the innate racial inferiority of the Negro—a belief that stood in the way of equal rights. Not all of the abolitionists were free from some of the popular misconceptions about the Negro, but they were of all men in the 1860's the most dedicated to proving the unity and equality of races. Throughout the decade they pressured the government to adopt a policy toward the Negro which would secure the goals of equality and justice. They sought such things as the use of Negro soldiers, the elimination of discrimination in the North, land and education for the freedmen, the creation and increased effectiveness of the Freedmen's Bureau, and the adoption of legislation guaranteeing the civil and political equality of the Negro. In describing this struggle for equality, McPherson provides not only a solid critical narrative but also many new insights, including a sophisticated discussion of the complicated relationship of the abolitionists to the Republican party; of the roots and significance of the split in aboli- BOOK REVIEWS185 tionism in 1865; and of the many strategic and ideological batdes within abolitionism. He dissects dilemmas that the abolitionists faced in their attitudes toward the freedmen. Some insisted that paternalism would mean that the Negro was less than a free man and might lead to an attitude of condescension; others argued that a laissez-faire approach, which avoided paternalism, would leave the Negro without needed aid. The result was an attempt to evolve a series of policies of limited but effective paternalism. Similarly, he shows that the abolitionists resisted the temptation to portray the Negro in unreal terms in order to prove the success of emancipation, but rather admitted that slavery had been quite successful in making the Negro fit for slavery and unfit for freedom, and hence the greater the task for the abolitionists. The only troublesome generalizations are those which insist on abolitionist influence and respectability. For example, McPherson writes that after the outbreak of civil war the abolitionists "were transformed almost overnight from despised fanatics to influential and respected spokesmen for the radical wing of the Republican party," or that once the North was committed to emancipation, the abolitionists "found themselves respected and influential." It is doubtful that the abolitionists came to be generally either respected or influential. Indeed, although they...