A Tedious Reconstruction

Heather Cox Richardson ’84 has all the answers. Why did the South vote for a Republican “cowboy” President in 2000 and again in 2004? Because of Reconstruction. Why is affirmative action still a hotly contested issue today? Reconstruction again. Why did America in the 80s favor Reganomics? Reconstruction.

“This is the book that explains why today’s political map looks like a map of the 1860s,” Richardson writes of “West from Appomattox,” because apparently the pro-Union states are now all Democratic and the current Republican states had either not yet reached statehood or were Confederate. The book’s argument is interesting, but ultimately a little too neat.

If you’re looking for an understanding of contemporary political conflicts, Richardson can give it to you in just one word: Reconstruction.

In the years following the Civil War, the Northern Republicans, which in new-millennium speak means Democrats, believed the best way to reforge the nation was by “favoring” what Richardson calls special interest groups—you know, the workers, women, and newly freed slaves seeking a guarantee of equal rights.

However, Richardson tells us, the growing middle class view was against the expansion of a government that favored any special interest group outside of themselves. If one was industrious, they would not need any special treatment from the government.

Much of Richardson’s focus is on the disappearing Western frontier, which provided the ideal of the hardworking individual free from eastern corruption and big government that Middle America lauded.

But, Richardson reminds us, everyone had their place. Women receiving a greater public voice was only okay when they were doing feminine things, like improving conditions for their children.

Middle class ideology said that if blacks would work hard, they would advance in life and earn respect. But then as now, what the middle class failed to recognize is that without equal rights, these groups could never achieve the American dream.

To demonstrate the spirit of individualism that pervaded the country of the time, Richardson peppers her overarching view of societal trends with tales of actual individuals. The aptly chosen lives she traces help the reader understand the motivations of the time and make it more personal.

These individual stories allow Richardson to delve into narrative history and ensure that “West from Appomattox” is not accessible only for scholars. Rather, it feels aimed at people who are intellectual and enjoy history, but don’t necessarily specialize in it.

But though Richardson’s writing is easy to understand, her book is difficult to get through. One can’t help but feel that Richardson could have said it all in a shorter book.

She reiterates the same fundamental points—there is a basic division in our society between special interest groups and those who oppose what they see as preferential treatment; this division can be traced back to Reconstruction; it affects all of our modern politics—over and over again. The story is good the first time, but by the tenth telling, it gets a bit dull.

The book ends with an epilogue, which neatly ties up all the points made in the nine lengthy chapters that precede it and connects current feelings on the economic role of the federal government to those first expressed during the Reconstruction.

Yet the eloquence of the section casts doubt on the existence on the rest of “West from Appomattox”: why read 340 repetitive pages when you can just read the epilogue?