ORDEAL BY FIRE

Princeton historian McPherson has produced what is unapologetically—in heft, in physical design, in the use of myriad headings and subheadings—a high-class undergraduate textbook. It does not so much supplant The Civil War and Reconstruction (Rev. 1969), by J. G. Randall and David Donald, as offer a worthy alternative—incorporating not only recent research findings but also far more detail on non-political matters and much quotation from contemporary and other sources. (McPherson's previous works—The Struggle for Equality and The Negro's Civil War—have made notable use of documentary material.) But, jam-packed with information, it is much more a book to learn from than a book to read. Most interesting in the larger scheme of things is the section on pre-Civil war currents—the modernizing, reformist Yankee Protestant ethos; the contrasting Southern socioeconomic order ("Herrenvolk democracy"); the anti-slavery movement ("the most modernized sector of the economy") and the proslavery counterattack (the "siege mentality," the wage-slave theme, the cavalier image). Moving into the war, McPherson pauses to explain "the process of raising a three-year regiment" and the specific advantages of the newly-perfected rifle; the outstanding feature of the material on the war itself—one not to be disparaged—is probably the maps. To that must be added—reflective of the whole—McPherson's attention to the role of blacks (the debate over their recruitment, the conditions under which they served). On Reconstruction—which he extends to 1890—McPherson is precise and pointed. Klansmen renegades? Not so: "Klansmen came from all social classes and their leaders were often prominent men or the sons of prominent men. . . . Their hit-and-run guerrilla tactics made them, in effect, a paramilitary arm of the Southern Democratic Party's effort to overthrow Republican rule in the South." Less than compulsive reading—but a valuable book to have around.