I have been intrigued by the fog that surrounds Reconstruction as fog seems to be a pointer to important issues.

This article clarifies a feeling I have had recently that the Republican party has been destroyed in the last decades since Nixon.

It seems we now only have two wings of the Democratic Party, the newish wing of F. Roosevelt and Clinton and the traditional party of Andrew Jackson and Strom Thurmond whose successors have taken over the Republican party.

I was raised in the party of Lincoln, Grant, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Rockefeller and that party now seems dead.

It's great to see more scholarship on this period. I've never heard much about a real plan associated with Reconstruction efforts, or - dare I say it - an exit strategy.

A successful Reconstruction could have broken the spell that the aristocrats had over average Southerners, who after all were being conned into fighting a rich man's war. Instead, it gave rise to the Lost Cause and associated pseudoheroic myths that still linger today.

"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was."

Faulkner didn't write that, some art-school geek from Up North did. But he could have.

Pinckney B.S. Pinchback, who served briefly as governor of Louisiana in 1872, was at least three-fourths or more white and so cannot be truthfully called "black" or "African American." The same can be said of his wife, daughter, and grandson, the author Jean Toomer.

A couple of interesting things written here.

First, David Byrne being referred to as an "art-school geek from Up North". I bet that would amuse him.

Second, the claim that a person who is "at least three-fourths or more white...cannot be truthfully called 'black' or 'African American.'"

A person with any recognizable African ancestry is still considered "Black" or "African American" today, in 2005. I teach at a school that is evenly divided between black and white students. Any student, no matter what skin tone, no matter what ancestry, is considered "Black" or "African American" if there is any trace of African features, or African ancestry. In 1872 that was, if possible, even more true.

After all, that was part of the point of the kind of racism that was practiced by most whites at that time. That was part of the justification for slavery. Whites were "pure" and blacks were "impure." The smallest amount of black blood was enough to taint someone. The terms quadroon and octoroon refer to people with one-quarter and one-eighth black ancestry, respectively. Such people did NOT rank as first class citizens. Even in the post-WWI 1940s a person who had as little as one-sixty-fourth black ancestry, who could "pass" for white, would suffer discrimination if that small percentage were to be discovered.

So while mischling2nd's argument may be true from a strictly logical perspective, functionally it is completely incorrect.

A slight correction: Zinn was never a "Harvard professor."

He taught at Spelman College in Atlanta during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Boston University, where he has been ever since.

If the US were a seperate world unto itself it might never be, but becasue the rest of the world exists and will have influence the idea that white fundamentalist christianists, becasue they are white fundamentalist christianists, should rule over everyone else will not be tenable in the long run.

I wish the article had drawn a stronger parallel between the Hayes Tilden contest and Bush Gore. Bush is as much a fraud as Rutherfraud Hayes. In both cases a stolen election was used to disenfranchise millions and trample on the civil rights of Americans. In Bush's case it was used to trample on the rest of the world.

Historical analysis has changed. I guess you can rehash certain historical events but so many times and you can't produce "new" work for publication if it's all been said so many times before. So the new trend in historical analysis is to write "what if" studies. A little bit is good, it helps us analyze how we could have avoided certain events (and hopefully learn for future events), but an overdone "what if scenario" keeps us from looking at reality.

The other trend is to refer to the past in the present tense. This is done in museums and historical interpretation sites by docents and is really annoying. (heard this summer: "And what do you think Mr. Jefferson does next?")

Comparing Eric Foner to Howard Zinn is like comparing Dizzy Gillespie to Kenny G. Foner's work, not just his work on Reconstruction, has stimulated the historical profession, and not just among radicals. Zinn's "The People's History of the United States" is little more than a scandal sheet.

I haven't read "Forever Free", but I can recommend Foner's definitive "Reconstruction". If you're new to Reconstruction, and aren't willing to slog through 700+ pages, I have two other recommendations:

1) Foner's "A Short History of Reconstruction" (an abridged version of the original, only 300 pages).

2) Hans Trefousse's "Reconstruction: America's First Effort at Racial Democracy". It's a trade paperback college text, originally published by Anvil, now by Krieger (updated). (Numerous used copies are available through your local or online used bookseller.) Trefousse covers the whole arc of Reconstruction in about 80 pages. It's an excellent overview. The remaining 150-or-so pages are primary documents: text of the constitutional amendments, Johnson's articles of impeachment, journalism of the time, etc.

Reading Foner's "slow motion" version of Reconstruction, you get a sense of the all-too-plausible daily grind of politics and violence, the everyday cowardices and missteps it took to get from Emancipation to Jim Crow. Reading Trefousse's "time lapse" version, you get a more visceral sense of how much was really lost.

I agree you have to be careful about too much "what if" speculation. Having read a number of books on Reconstruction, I inevitably get to a point where I say to myself, "Man, if only X had done Y, then everything would've been different." If only Lincoln had lived, if only the Republicans had been more united, if only Andrew Johnson had never been born, then it all might have worked out. (It's usually about Andrew Johnson.)

But then I keep going, and I look back over the whole landscape. Unless Radical Republicans had remained united, and had truly imposed their will on the South, and blacks had taken up arms, and the KKK had been supressed, and and and... The necessary and sufficient conditions were just too many and too large for it to work out differently. It was inevitable that it would take another century and more for real progress to be made.

Happy MLK Day.