"The Second American Revolution" by J.M. McPherson
When I thought about the Civil War and Reconstruction, I hardly ever gave any thought to the word "revolution," or what Europeans like Marx thought of the war. This "revolution" is too complex to be summed up as an issue of North versus South or slavery versus freedom. Indeed, McPherson's essay was enlightening in more than one aspect.
First, when viewing the war as Beard did (influenced by Marxist ideas), the term word revolution seems appropriate. Moore and Beard's (with some differences) interpretation seem more a conglomeration of all the issues affecting the war: freedom/slavery, industrialism/agriculture, bourgeoisie/plantation culture. The war's impact, according to the author, was seen in "sweeping transformations in the balance of economic and political power between the North and the South..." and "merit the label of revolution" (p. 9). As a non-history (literature major) I was taken aback at just how much the country's power and economic growth was affected.
Equally interesting was McPherson's definition of internal/external view of the war. The external revolution was obvious - the internal revolution included the emancipation of so many slaves and their new social positions in society in a very short space of time (twelve years). In presenting other historical perspectives, McPherson clarifies what he means by revolution. That is, even though historians do not see it as such, he argues that presentation and looking at history backwards is the problem. By presenting the war in context statistically, socially, and economically one can see the picture: it was a period of "great...relative change" for the black American population.
Last, when compared to countries such as Cuba and Brazil, it is hard to say there was "no change" after the war, thereby concluding that it was not a revolution. Slavery was indeed a blight on our history, and coming from ancestors who were themselves slaves in Puerto Rico and born in the 1970's, I was likely to maintain there was not much social change since then. However, this essay helped me to see our Civil War history in another light: revolution is not a word I will take lightly in the future.
"The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender" by Leeann Whites
This essay was my favorite one! Historically, women and minorities were left out of early written accounts/reviews on the war. Issues of slavery were side-stepped and the war was written about through the "white man's perspective." For example, Beecher Stowe's classic Uncle Tom's Cabin had been labelled in the past as "lachrymose" and full of sentimentality not important to the canon of classic American literature. Through previous research, I knew the economic and gender difficulties faced by early American women (see https://sites.google.com/site/thestoryoffrancesdeverbykmc/ as an example of my personal studies). Yet, Whites' essay helped to understand history in a new perspective - that of gender and how it affected women and men, and social, economic, and familial structures both in the North and South during the war.
What about gender and what role did it play in the Civil War? Here, Whites treats the topic more profoundly than I have read before. Black men were not considered men, or good enough to enlist to fight in the war. When ex-slaves were able to fight for the Union, Southern white men had to depend on their wives not only for emotional and physical subsistence, but for "reproduction" to ensure the South would march on, as they saw it. Women became more independent, therefore, more male (p. 21). The war's aftermath left no doubt that the defeated Southern man had to take "solace" in family life. Previously "subordinate," Southern women saw victory in defeat, contends Whites. Yet, in the end, there was no true victory, as black women were forced to work for white women, black men's lives were always at stake, and white women were not truly equal to white men. Even though Whites gives us a glimpse of what the war did regarding gender relations, there was no real win there. Wonderful essay!
"The First Occupation" by Edward L . Ayers
An equally thought-provoking essay as the aforementioned, Ayers writes about the Civil War and Reconstruction via a global perspective. Treating Resconstruction via our occupation of Japan and Iraq, Ayers returns to American history to offer "lessons" on our "own self-resconstruction" by enumerating those lessons in nine concise points. One of a few favorites was that "freedom" is "a pliable word," for example, meaning different things to different sections of society (p. 26).
I also appreciated that Ayers treated the topic of the KKK, which I have all too often seen compacted into arguements of free speech or not talked about at all, because it is so painful. I learned that this was part of the South's idea of "radical reconstruction," complete with black codes enacted soon after the war. It was a time when the North was seen as "greedy carpetbaggers," Ayers writes on page 27, because of the North's inconsistency in ignoring black disenfranchisement. I did not realize that the South capitalized on the North's failures this way.
Ayers' last paragraph was the most thought-provoking because it does not neatly tie up what reconstruction meant, but rather, warns us of the risk we take as Americans when we do not look at the full spectrum of what reconstruction means in our society. That is, we cannot be so self-righteous as to wield the sword with "might," but also with "humility and self-knowledge," and "understanding," he writes on page 27. Many times, I have heard of other nations calling us "greedy" and "self-righteous," so it is important, as Ayers contends, that we are careful to look at our own history when helping other nations such as Iraq reconstruct after war.
