Southern Reconstruction, or, Common Sense Takes a Holiday

Bill Vallante

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in Commack, N.Y.
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Southern Reconstruction, or, Common Sense Takes a Holiday -- Commentary by Bill Vallante

Many historical distortions have come down the pike in recent years concerning the War Between the States, its causes, and its aftermath. Most of the distortions used by contemporary historians follow the same old recipe – a dash of truth, a distortion here or there, and a healthy dose of facts left out. A recent New York Times book review entitled, “A Less Perfect Union”, lauded one such book, “Redemption, The Last Battle of the Civil War”,[1] by Professor Nicholas Lemann, the Dean of Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

The book focuses on 'Reconstruction' in Mississippi. Lemann is not the foremost expert in the field of Southern Reconstruction. That “honor,” according to most contemporary historians goes to liberal Professor Eric Foner of Columbia, (what is it about that school anyway?!), who has written many books on the subject and who lectures extensively on it.

If you haven’t been keeping up with what is laughingly called “contemporary historical scholarship” these days, the story now goes something like this:

Reconstruction has become a warm and fuzzy story of social progress, (sometimes referred to as an “interracial democracy”), brutally stamped out by those evil white supremacists. (One would think that white folks are the only folks in the world who have ever strived for supremacy or practiced it!?)
Race Riots and “paramilitary carnage”, initiated by whites of course, helped drive out the many so-called “elected” black leaders who had held political office in record numbers between 1867-1876.
The fact that northern support for Reconstruction had faded by 1876 is bemoaned and many a set of liberal academic hands are wrung in despair. The fact that southern whites fought back against being disenfranchised while having their former slaves run the show is condemned as, you guessed it, WHITE SUPREMACY! And those theories which portray Reconstruction as a mistake are labeled “debunked” at best or “racist” at worst.

Does Professor Lemann’s book cover the North’s unwillingness to indulge in “interracial democracies” in its own states? Or was it only the conquered South which was expected to allow former slaves to run the show? Well, I didn’t read the book, but I didn’t see any mention of that in the Times book review, so my guess would be “no”!

And why would northern support for Reconstruction fade? I don’t suppose it could have been the incompetence and corruption of those running the Reconstruction governments, which after a while shocked even the most inveterate Yankee?? Naah!

But wait! Witness the writings of a Yankee correspondent from the New York World, writing about a Reconstruction convention in Alabama in 1867 –

“Yesterday the Alabama Constitutional Convention adjourned. If I have said anything harsh of that convention, I am proud of it. It was, beyond doubt, as bad a conclave as ever misrepresented a people or forged the name of a deliberative body. One is appalled by the magnificent rascality of this first of the Reconstruction conventions, taken as a whole. The trouble is that the northern people – and they are not to blame for it – can not believe these revelations….If I, who write, had never come South, neither could I have believed in things that, when told, so strain human credulity. But, seeing is believing….And having both seen and heard this lately adjourned Alabama Convention, I am smit with horror that any such ineffable fraud, and such infinite monstrosity, should be permitted for one single instant of time to threaten by the abortion it produces to have a share in ruling us of the north.” [2]

Pretty harsh words – and from a Yankee no less! I guess you’d have to have been there to know the real deal. By the way, the Yankee journalist whose observations are quoted above was there! Professor Lemann was not there, neither was Professor Foner, and neither was Sean Wilentz, the NY Times writer who wrote the book review!

And while my knowledge of Mississippi’s Reconstruction experience isn’t on a par with my knowledge of Reconstruction in other states, and while I did not read Lemann’s book, I do happen to know that the Times Book Review failed to include mention of the following in its report. Of course, I’m also betting that these things weren’t mentioned in Lemann’s book either:

**”The Mississippi State legislature of 1870, which contained 35 blacks”, (most being former slaves), “proceeded to sit for an unheard of 6 months and run up expenses that were 3 times that of the 1865 legislature.” [3]
**“”In the majority of county offices sat colored officials, an impressive percentage of whom were unable to either read or write.” [4]
**”In 1875, state expenses reached the sum of one 1.43 million dollars, whereas for 1876, the first year of reconstituted white control, the total was to be $500,047!” [5]

I’m waiting for the NY Times, or Lemann or Foner or for anyone to explain to me why Mississippi’s legislative budget could increase three fold in five years time, or how so many illiterate people managed to become state representatives, or what nearly a million extra dollars was spent on in 1875? Such things were not at all uncommon in the South during Reconstruction, but such things are also seldom if ever mentioned in contemporary books about Reconstruction - so I guess I could end up waiting for a very long time for an explanation!?

Of course, the phrase “contemporary scholarship” is bandied about in the review with great solemnity. It’s a term you hear a lot these days. However, no one, not Lemann, nor that so-called “expert” on Reconstruction, Eric Foner, seems willing to explain how a largely inexperienced and illiterate people, who were slaves in 1865, can so quickly and so suddenly acquire the skills necessary to hold political office in such record numbers by 1867? The proponents of “contemporary scholarship”, as well as their peddlers like the NY Times, seem to consistently skip over that point!? I wish someone would enlighten me on how such a miracle of progress was possible in such a short a time.

Perhaps Georges Clemenceau, who lived at the time, commented on it most realistically, though in what we would today term a politically incorrect, (yet completely truthful) way:

He wondered how

“… these primitive people, whose contribution to civilization added up to exactly nothing, could so speedily surmount all their lack of qualifications as to worthily take their places as political partners of the progressive white race.” [6]

And what of the so-called “paramilitary carnage” or riots that occurred? Contemporary authors seem to wring their hands in agony over it like most white liberals do, leaving it to the reader to assume that it is always the whites who initiated such carnage.

I don’t suppose the freedmen ever started any of the riots that occurred during the Reconstruction Period? Or perhaps contemporary historians believe that black folks are incapable of starting riots??? (Guess they haven’t watched the news much over the last 40 years!?). Apparently the well-known abolitionist Gerrit Smith was not unaware of the problem. Unlike Lemann, Foner, and the NY Times, he didn’t stick his head up his butt and pretend that it wasn’t happening either:

“‘If black men will riot, I fear that emancipation is a failure’. So spoke the great abolitionist Gerrit Smith, from the pulpit of the Old African Church….. ‘Riots in Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans have made me sick at heart’” [7]

And what about this little incident from Mississippi:

“In Raymond Mississippi, Negro troops strung a flag across the street and drove the white children under it.”!? [8]

Was this incident mentioned in Lemann’s book? Can’t say for sure but it wasn’t mentioned in the Times’ review so my guess would be “NO”!

A point about that oft-used term these days, “SCHOLARSHIP”! A group of warm and fuzzy academics sitting around and denouncing someone else’s work simply because it says things that offend their sensitive little ears does not qualify as scholarship. Just because a mob of academic inbreds who bring their own agendas to their research or who are fearful of losing their jobs say something is so, does not mean that it is so.

Further, all the “contemporary scholarship” in the world can’t change the law of gravity. If you drop a pencil, it will go DOWN, not UP! Similarly, if you take a large number of illiterate and inexperienced people and make them judges, commissioners, lieutenant governors, state representatives, etc., as happened during Reconstruction, they will make a mess of things. This isn’t history, it isn’t social theory, it is FACT!

We are not all created equal. If we were I’d be playing quarterback for the New England Patriots. Last time I checked Tom Brady had the job and he was doing better than I ever could have done in my best days. We all have talents and it is up to us to discover what those talents are and then improve upon them through education, experience, and practice. Talent and competency are not made overnight – they take time. That isn’t history, that’s COMMON SENSE, and it appears that common sense, which was in short supply during Reconstruction, has once again taken a holiday!

Finally, a comment about the following, which was in the NY Times Book Review:

>>>…Reconstruction as a noble, thwarted experiment, the nation’s “unfinished revolution,” in the words of the era’s current leading historian, Eric Foner. This book strives to burn that academic re-evaluation into the minds of nonacademic readers<<<

I especially find frightening the words “…to BURN that academic re-evaluation into the minds of nonacademic readers.” There is no mention of discussion, no mention of contention or argument, no mention of thought or reason, which incidentally, are all a part of that which used to be called, SCHOLARSHIP! Where I come from, we call “burning” ideas into nonacademic or unknowing minds BRAINWASHING – not scholarship!!

SOURCES
[1]New York Time Book Review:
Amazon book review

[2] “The Coming of the Glory”, John Tilley, Page 112

[3] “The South in the Building of the Nation”, Ulrich B. Phillips, pages 436-437

[4] “The Coming of the Glory”, John Tilley, Page 256

[5] “The South in the Building of the Nation”, Ulrich B. Phillips, pages 436-437

[6] “American Reconstruction”, Georges Clemenceau, pages 297-298,

[7] “Dixie After the War”, Myrta Lockett Avary, page 241

[8] “Dixie after the War”, Myrta Lockett Avary, page 22

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in Commack, N.Y.

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