Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South

American Ways Series

by Michael W. Fitzgerald

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, revisionist historians have been sympathetic to the racial justice motivations of the Radical Republican Reconstruction policies that followed the Civil War. But this emphasis on positive goals and accomplishments has obscured the role of the Republicans in the overthrow of their own program. Rich with insight, Michael W. Fitzgerald's new interpretation of Reconstruction shows how the internal dynamics of this first freedom movement played into the hands of white racist reactionaries in the South. Splendid Failure recounts how postwar financial missteps and other governance problems quickly soured idealistic Northerners on the practical consequences of the Radical Republican plan, and set the stage for the explosion that swept Southern Republicans from power and resulted in Northern acquiescence to the bloody repression of voting rights. The failed strategy offers a chastening example to present-day proponents of racial equality.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Grad School, Race, American History

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 3, 2007

Reviews

[Jacob Lines]

If America’s founding era from Revolution to Constitution was the nation’s birth, the Civil War and Reconstruction were its baptism by blood and fire – a rebirth that fundamentally transformed its constitutional arrangements. This book is a history of Reconstruction. In it, Fitzgerald details the fragile alliances that Republicans had to form to try to transform the South. At first, many northern Republicans were hesitant to enfranchise blacks, but continuing resistance from southern whites prompted them to agree to enfranchisement and civil rights for blacks to break the old slave power. Fitzgerald also focuses on the errors made by southern Republicans – they emphasized railroad building, but corruption, mismanagement, and financial troubles caused some of their northern supporters to back off. But even without those faults, Reconstruction was bound to fail as the northern supporters, who were still rather racist, grew weary of the fight and the expense. This gives an excellent education about Reconstruction.

[Shane Hawk]

Academic history books are lackluster as a requirement. The writing left much to be desired. This professor's new twist on historical consensus of Reconstruction's failure seemed to be just placing more blame on Republicans, both of the North and South. A satisfactory amount of information packed within its 234 pages, but ultimately skippable.

[Tara]

I enjoyed the book. Good information about the south if studying civil war era.

[Joe]

The book sees the failure of Reconstruction arising from white supremacist terrorism, the perception (and frequent reality) of incompetence, divisiveness and corruption within the Reconstructed Republican state governments and, ultimately, the loss of Northern political support. When Northern politicians and the national press adopted the convenient belief that ex-Confederacy "Home Rule" would nonetheless continue the political gains African-Americans had made since the end of the Civil War, the road to Jim Crow was made smooth. By the late 1870's, as the bitter sentiments inflamed by the War had begun to subside and the Northern states grew tired of the Southern Question, Reconstruction was seen as an insoluble morass that Presidents and Congress simply chose to ignore by hoping for the best. To say the least, their hope was misplaced. If you want to read "the book" on Reconstruction, pick up Eric Foner's "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877."

[Richard Subber]

Splendid Failure offers a more realistic account of the so-called “Reconstruction” period after the Civil War. There was a lot more violence, much earlier in the time frame, than you probably know about.
The violence throughout the South was not successfully resisted by Northern forces after the war, and after the presidential election dispute of 1876, the Northern watchdogs withdrew their concern. Commercial and political interests asserted their primacy in the North.
Fitzgerald observes: “At the national level the Republicans were the party of economic growth” (p. 100).
The white elites who held the economic and political power in the South before the war basically regained their economic and political power after the brief period of nominally reformative so-called “Reconstruction.”
As we now know, the war and the so-called Emancipation Proclamation weren’t the end of the story.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Hans Myers]

Fitzgerald tackles Reconstruction with aplomb, writing an excellent synthesis of recent scholarship reevaluating the failure of post-war Reconstruction. With that being said, however, Fitzgerald takes a rather conservative tack when it comes to evaluating Federal intervention in the former Confederacy. His criticisms of the Grant administration, in particular, do not particularly jibe with more recent scholarship on Presidential Reconstruction under the African-American's most zealous executive advocate. That being said, however, Fitzgerald does a decent job of highlighting the advances made by the African-American's community themselves in the period of biracial democracy from 1865 to 1876.

[David]

I was hoping to learn about Reconstruction, but this book was just not very engaging and the information was not laid out in a clear way.

[Kim]

Are you going against Foner or nah?

[Andrew]

Awesome profesor, interesting topic.

[Jay McCann]

I couldn't finish the book. Great subject but not well written.

[Sara]

Some of the parallels to the current political climate are chilling.