Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 119
BOOK REVIEWS
Reunion. The author does not intend for this New
History of Reconstruction to replace other works,
especially Eric Foner’s massive study of the period.
However, by focusing primarily on the political aspects of reconstruction and placing them in the context of the events of the era, he outlines the key facts,
frustrations, and failures of the “post-war” program
for the modern officer.
Summers begins with wartime reconstruction and
the evolving policies toward occupying and governing
border and rebellious states. Lincoln ultimately adopted a policy to rapidly return states to civil authority by accepting government based on only a loyal 10
percent of the electorate. His critics rightly observed
that this was too narrow of a portion of the electorate
to be sustained without military support. This proved
all too true by the end of 1865. President Johnson
required only a grudging acceptance of the Thirteenth
Amendment, and a largely insincere profession of
loyalty thus enabled the former rebels to quickly use
the courts and legislatures to suppress the freedmen
and punish Unionists.
Slowly and reluctantly, the Republicans realized
the Union victory would be lost if something more
drastic were not done. Over the vetoes of the president, Congress passed a series of acts that renewed
the military occupation of the South and set requirements for a return to full statehood. The GOP won
the fight with Johnson over reconstruction policy
and control of the army of occupation but, unfortunately, this did not produce a successful reconstruction of the South nor the acceptance of the civil
rights of black Americans.
Summers describes how the spirit of white southern resistance never ended. Their acceptance of
congressional requirements was never more than
tactical or temporary. The southern Democrats were
also quite willing to use intimidation and violence to
obstruct and overthrow “reconstruction.” Reflecting
Gary Gallagher’s argument in The Union War, the
author reminds readers that for the Union generation
that fought the war, it was not about ending slavery
but was about restoring the Union. Thus, most northerners were more concerned with reconstructing the
Union than with reconstructing the social and political landscape of the South—much less guaranteeing
equal rights for the former slaves .
MILITARY REVIEW July-August 2015
Because the nation sacrificed regional “peace”
for racial justice, Summers takes the long view in
judging the success of reconstruction. The Union
was restored and slavery was ended, but it took
nearly a century for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to be enforced as intended. This
American story should remind military officers that
stability is often fragile, and it can be temporary, and
reconstructing a society is a very long-term effort.
Finally, no history can tell the complete story,
and Summers’ impressive overview has little room
for personal stories of military officers during
reconstruction. For the accounts of several largely unsung heroes, such as Adelbert Ames, Lewis
Merrill, and even James Longstreet, I also recommend The Bloody Shirt: Terror after the Civil War
by Stephen Budiansky.
Donald B. Connelly, Ph.D., Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas
THE GREAT WAR AND THE ORIGINS OF
HUMANITARIANISM, 1918-1924
Bruno Cabanes, Cambridge University Press,
New York, 2014, 397 pages
I
n this scholarly monograph, Bruno Cabanes,
professor of history at The Ohio State University,
argues that the aftermath of the First World War
marked “a decisive turning point in the redefinition of
humanitarianism” from a form of charity work to an
assertion of humanitarian rights. Previously, European
and American humanitarians worked to ease suffering
and were driven by a Christian-based ethic of empathy.
In this effort, the nation-state often played a critical
role in delivering aid. But the devastating consequences
of World War I—hundreds of thousands of refugees,
many veterans suffering from severe psychological or
physical distress, famines and epidemics, and the collapse of the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman
empires—were so severe that nation-states could no
longer solve these problems themselves.
Humanitarians addressed these challenges by
emphasizing transnational approaches to activism.
Beyond practical considerations, Cabanes argues that
the postwar assertion of humanitarian rights “became
117