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The Reconstruction Presidents. By Brooks D. Simpson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, I998. Pp. xi, 276. $35.oo.)
In Reconstruction: The Ending of the Civil War, a 1969 revisionist study, Avery Craven sought to explain why reconstruction as a social revolution failed, and to do so without assessing blame. Why were the problems of freedom and equality not solved but left for later generations to face? He concluded that "realities had been ignored in a mad plunge for perfection for which poor, stumbling, bleeding mankind was as yet unprepared." He added, "Reconstruction failed not because perfection is not to be desired, but because it has a price" (305).
Three decades later, Brooks Simpson, in a very different sort of book, also reminds us of the importance of "realities" that constrained the freedom of action of historic figures. From Abraham Lincoln's wartime efforts through the misunderstood policies of Rutherford B. Hayes, Simpson focuses on the presidency as an institution. He examines each president's decision-making...