CIVIL WAR
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Michaela Crawford Reaves, Ph.D.
“Traditional” Interpretations
• Late 19th century
• Radical Republicans dominated southern life
• Unscrupulous carpetbaggers and scalawags
exploited the poor South; graft rampant!
• Black supremacy oppressed poor white
Southerners; nothing but barbaric!
• Argues race the major issue,
• Reconstruction A BIG failure!
• Interpretation is now considered racist.
William Archibald Dunning
• From New Jersey
• 1857-1922
• Defined first decades
of Reconstruction
history
• Condoned KKK
• Poor abused South
• Evil scheming North
• Child-like Negroes
Claude Bowers
• 1878-1958
• Mass culture absorbed
Dunning’s ideas
through The Tragic
Era (fiction)
• Racial inequality
necessary
Progressive Historians
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Early 20th century
Second American Revolution
Largest issue: ECONOMICS
Dominant northern capitalists exploit
defeated South
• South still exploited, but for different
reasons, evil plot nonetheless.
• A handful of scholars dispute this view.
Charles A. Beard
• 1874-1948
• Dominant northern
capitalists exploit
defeated South
• Economic
interpretation
beginning in 1923
• Focused on material
self interest, not
ideology
W.E.B. DuBois
• 1868-1963
• Brought African
American experience
to the table
• Wrote Black
Reconstruction
• Communist
• Reconstruction had a
good side, benefits.
Vernon Parrington
• 1871-1929
• Saw everything in
terms of culture and
American idealism
• Jeffersonian
• Wanted to separate
states’ rights from
slavery issue
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
• 1877-1934
• Emphasis on race
overshadowed by
Beardians
• Contended slaves
were treated well
• Examined class in
South
James G. Randall
• 1881-1953
• Argued Civil War a
result of failed
statesmanship
• Analyzed
administration and
constitutional issues
• Wrote Lincoln and the
South
Avery O. Craven
• 1885-1980
• Believed Civil War
unavoidable
• Lincoln too
conservative. Failed
to provide adequate
punishment for
“rebels,” and did not
offer sufficient
guaranty of Black
rights
Alrutheus A. Taylor
• 1893-1955
• African American
historian
• Academic dean at Fisk
• Study of AfricanAmericans
• Destroying stereotypes of
'sambo,' the ignorant of
the carpetbaggers."
Francis Butler Simkins
• 1897-1966
• Helped lay foundation for
modern Civil Rights
movement
• First revisionist on
Reconstruction 1931
• With Robert Woody
examined South Carolina
in Reconstruction
Revisionist Historians
• Second Reconstruction Era: 1950’s and
1960’s
• African-Americans at center of issue
• Andrew Johnson now a pig-headed racist
• Radical Republicans are GOOD guys!
• Reconstruction had positive effects!
• Revolutionary impulse thwarted
Howard K. Beale
• 1899-1959
• A successful attempt
by northern moneyed
industrialists using the
Republican party for
their own ends.
• Remove southern
ruling class
• Beardian self-interest
• Tends to disregard
issues of Civil Rights
LaWanda F. Cox
• 1909-2005
• Moderate Republicans
spearheaded
Reconstruction
• Not economics but
race relations the
major issue
• Genuine conviction
for legal equality
Kenneth Stampp
• 1912• Refutes Dunning
• Reconstruction a
success
• Last “great crusade of
19th century
reformers.”
• Issue: too many
secondary sources
C. Vann Woodward
• 1908-1999
• Reconstruction was
not revolutionary
• Very conservative
• Strange Career of Jim
Crow (1955)
• Dissertation advisor:
Howard K. Beale
John Hope Franklin
• 1915• Focused on AfricanAmerican
contribution
• “And what historians
have written tells as
much about their own
generation as about
the Reconstruction
period itself.”
• Civil Rights influence
Post-revisionism
• 1970’s
• Racial prejudice compromised efforts to
aid freedmen.
• Reconstruction was “superficial”
• New South just continuation of Old South
• Reconstruction was conservative and not
revolutionary at all!
Leon Litwack
• 1929
• Been in the Storm So
Long
• Whites indifferent
• Freedmen succeeded
• Focus on black-white
relations analyzing
tensions and
dependence
Michael Les Benedict
• No Radical
Reconstruction, a
misnomer
• Preserve the
Constitution, first and
foremost
• Neo-Abolitionist
• Political science
interpretation
Michael Perman
• Moderate Republicans
sought cooperation with
southern whites
• Vulnerable to Southern
obstructionism
• Southern leaders
disenfranchised blacks
and poor whites with
complicity of northern
Republican Progressives
Cultural History
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Late 80’s into 90’s
Emphasis on what certain groups did
Did Blacks in power ignore Black issues?
Issue not integration/segregation, but land.
Need comparative studies
Alienation ignored in favor of nationalism
Class formation and transformation, not race
Joel Williamson
• Reconstruction a time of
progress for African
Americans
• The Crucible of Race
(1984)
• Freedmen in South
Carolina did amazingly
well
• Currently at Chapel Hill,
North Carolina
James McPherson
• Argues
Reconstruction does
not end in 1877, but
1890 with last
“bloody shirt” bill
• Sectional and racial
issues ceased to be a
national event.
Eric Foner
• Marxist
• Issue is changing class
relationships
• Use of law to preserve
plantation system and
control of labor
• Economic role pertained
to labor control
• http://www.digitalhistory.
uh.edu/reconstruction/ind
ex.html
The End