BOOK REVIEWS175 The Public Good: Phifonthropy and Welfare in the Civil War Era. By Robert H. Bremner. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Pp. xviii, 234. $15.00.) The one curious thing about this admirably written and researched book is that it does not dwell at length on what initially appears to be its principal theme. Written as part of The Impact of the Civil War series, The Public Good begins with the straightforward thesis that experiences during the war "stimulated a number of philanthropists and reformers to postwar efforts to realize the unsatisfied ideal of rational, systematic, orderly conduct of both public and private charities" (p. xviii). But it is not until 200 pages later that Professor Bremner sets forth the details of this argument, namely, that the war encouraged and developed managerial skills in certain philanthropically minded individuals, enabling them to establish state boards of charity, national conferences, and the like. This modest organizational revolution was accompanied by a new respect for voluntary efforts and a new propensity to rely on them for solutions to social problems—even though, according to Bremner's own estimates, public charitable expenditures had outstripped private expenditures by 1869 (see pp. 23, 181). The view of the Civil War as an impetus to organized relief and reform is not surprising or novel; certainly it is prefigured in such works as George M. Frederickson's The Inner Civil War (1965) or Harold M. Hyman's A More Perfect Union (1973). But Bremner has written a rich and varied study, and has developed several other important themes, not all of which deal with the immediate impact of the war. The most interesting of these has to do with the schizoid character of nineteenthcentury American philanthropy, both Northern and Southern, public and private, post and antebellum. When it came to the deserving poor, such as crippled veterans or victims of natural disasters, Americans were extraordinarily generous—over five million dollars, for example, was raised following the 1871 Chicago fire. But where the undeserving poor were concerned, they were grudging, parsimonious, and apt to demand work in exchange for aid. Americans were obsessed with avoiding "indiscriminate " relief, lest it produce dependent paupers. (Actually, the fear of pauperization which Bremner stresses may have served only as a pretext; one can imagine that nineteenth-century Americans, steeped in \'oluntarism and individualism, were simply galled at the prospect of the idle feeding on the communal teat.) One consequence of this wary attitude toward charity was the tendency to endow libraries, museums, colleges , and other institutions of higher learning. The assumption was that only those who had the wherewithal to use the facilities would profit from them; there was no chance that the undeserving or unambitious would derive illicit gain. Thus American philanthropy tended to benefit those who needed it least; one had, for example, to possess both literacy and a certain amount of leisure to make use of Andrew Carnegie's libraries . This paradox was not fully addressed until the late nineteenth cen- 176CIVIL WAR HISTORY tury, when a different set of reformers, armed with a different metaphysics , became advocates, not judges, of the demoralized poor. The idea that cultural and political values determined the nature and impact of philanthropic endeavors figures in other parts of Bremner's analysis as well. One reason that Confederate war relief was relatively ineffective was that "states' rights philosophy justified particularistic tendencies in charities as in nearly everything else" (p. 47). This factor, together with transportation and other difficulties, precluded intelligent coordination of aid to Southern soldiers. Bremner also argues that Southern resentment and deep-seated racial attitudes undermined efforts to educate the freedmen. Volunteer teachers who made their way south found themselves socially ostracized or, at worst, threatened by organized resistance activities such as the Ku Klux Klan. On one level, then, The Public Good advances a plausible, not overly detailed, and probably noncontroversial thesis about the impact of the war on the organization of philanthropic enterprise. On another and deeper level, The Public Good explores the cultural configurations of that enterprise, showing—at times brilliantly—how basic beliefs and attitudes shaped our dichotomous and troubling approach to the poor. David T. Courtwright...
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Mar 1, 2024
Ron B Aviram 
Open Access