American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  24–5 [The field of battle]: Leander Stillwell, The Story of a Common Soldier, 1861–1865 (Franklin Hudson, 1920), p. 44; and see Commager, vol. 2, p. 603; Wiley, Yank, ch. 3.

  25 [Fondness for war]: quoted in Nevins, vol. 2, p. 347 footnote.

  [“Nobody sees a battle”]: quoted in Wiley, Yank, p. 77.

  [Loading muskets]: McPherson, op. cit., p. 196.

  [Disposition of dead after battle]: quoted in T. Harry Williams, History of American Wars, op. cit., p. 257.

  26 [Medical treatment for wounded]: McPherson, p. 384.

  [Sanitary conditions and disease]: ibid., p. 383; Wiley, Yank, p. 125.

  26–7 [Sanitary Commission]: Nevins, vol. 1, pp. 283–85, 416, and vol. 3, pp. 317–19; George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War (Harper & Row, 1965), ch. 7; United States Sanitary Commission Documents, 2 vols. (1866).

  27 [Patent Office into hospital]: Eliza Woolsey Howland, “The Top of the Patent Office Became a Hospital,” in Sylvia G. L. Dannett, ed., Noble Women of the North (ThomasYoseloff, 1959), pp. 81–83, quoted on soldier at p. 83.

  [Prison conditions]: William B. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons (Frederick Ungar, 1930); and see Commager, vol. 2, pp. 685–707.

  28 [“Battle Hymn”in Libby Prison]: Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliot, Julia Ward Howe (Houghton Mifflin, 1915), vol. 1, pp. 188–89.

  “Let Us Die to Make Men Free”

  28–9 [The threat to Washington and the Shenandoah Valley campaign]: Catton, Stillness at Appomattox, op. cit., pp. 255–75, 279–88, 295–317; McPherson, op. cit., p. 429.

  29 [Atlanta campaign]: Samuel Carter III, The Siege of Atlanta, 1864 (St. Martin’s Press, 1973); B. H. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Dodd, Mead, 1930), pp. 231–307.

  [“Atlanta is ours”]: quoted in Carter, p. 318.

  [The view from Richmond]: see Morris, op. cit., p. 290.

  30 [“Loathsome wounds”]: Woodward, op. cit., p. 641.

  [“I am First Texas”]: quoted in ibid., p. 637.

  [Wounded soldiers in Washington, D.C.]: Leech, op. cit., pp. 325–26.

  [Louisa May Alcott in Washington, DC.]: ibid., pp. 222–24.

  [“Getting worse, worse, worse”]: letter of April 5, 1864, in Whitman, The Correspondence, Edwin Haviland Miller, ed. (New York University Press, 1961–69), vol. 1, p. 208.

  [Lincoln on cooperation with successor]: quoted in Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None (Harper & Row, 1977), p. 395.

  31 [Lincoln as politician]: David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (Vintage Books, 1961), pp.57–81, 103–27; Don C. Seitz, Lincoln: The Politician (Coward-McCann, 1931).

  [1862 cabinet crisis]: Burlon J. Hendrick, Lincoln’s War Cabinet (Little, Brown, 1946), Book 5, ch. 1; James MacGregor Burns, The Vineyard of Liberty (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 626–27, Lincoln on “pumpkins” quoted at p. 627.

  31 [Pressure for Seward’s resignation]: James W. White to William Butler, January 12, 1863, Chicago Historical Society.

  [Lincoln’s advice to general]: Lincoln to J. M. Schofield, May 27, 1863, Lincoln Collection, Chicago Historical Society.

  31–2 [Lincoln and foreign policy]: Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974); Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (Stanford University Press, 1960), chs. 21–22; Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (F. S. Crofts, 1941), ch. 22; Philip Van Doren Stern, When the Guns Roared (Doubleday & Co., 1965), ch. 38; Norman Graebner, “Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality,” in Armin Rappaport, ed..Essays in American Diplomacy (Macmillan, 1967), pp. 106–20.

  32 [Absence of loyalty to Lincoln]: quoted in Donald, p. 62.

  [Republican critics on Lincoln]: ibid.

  [Advisability of second term questioned]: ibid, p. 63.

  [Adams on Davis and Lincoln]: Charles Francis Adams to Richard Henry Dana, Jr., April 8, 1963, R. H. Dana Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [Republican radicals and Lincoln] T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (University of Wisconsin Press, 1941), esp. ch. 12; Donald, ch. 6; Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968); Mark E. Neely.Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 1982), pp. 251–54 (“Radical Republicans”).

  [Lincoln’s use of patronage]: Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (Columbia University Press, 1943), ch. 10.

  33 [1864 conventions and campaign]: Harold M. Hyman, “Election of 1864,” in Arthur M.Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (Chelsea House,1971), vol. 2, pp. 1155–78; Oates, pp. 387–99.

  [“A view to an ultimate convention”]: Democratic platform reprinted in Schlesinger, vol. 2, pp. 1179–80, quoted at p. 1179.

  [Richmond Examiner on McClellan’s platform]: quoted in Nevins, The War for the Union, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 101.

  [Copperheads in 1864]: Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War (Viking Press, 1942), ch. 8.

  [Election results, 1864]: Schlesinger, vol. 2, p. 1244.

  [Lincoln’s movement to the left]: McPherson, p. 477.

  34 [Peace initiatives]: Basler, op. cit., vol. 7, pp. 517–18.

  [Lincoln’s leadership]: see Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (Simon and Schuster, 1953).

  [Sherman’s march through Georgia]: McPherson, p. 460; and see Liddell Hart, pp. 331–35.

  35 [Lee on his army]: quoted in Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee (Scribner’s, 1934–36),vol. 4, p. 84.

  [Surrender at Appomattox]: ibid., vol. 4, pp. 117–48.

  [Union colonel on Lee]: Stephen Minot Weld, War Diary and Letters (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), p. 396.

  [News of Lee’s surrender reaches Washington]: Oates, p. 422.

  [Welles on jubilation in Washington]: Bcale, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 278.

  36 [The legend of Lincoln begins]: adapted in part from Max Lerner, Ideas for the Ice Age (Viking Press, 1941), pp. 396–97.

  [Experiment of the Confederacy]: E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America: 1861–1865 (Louisiana State University Press, 1950); Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Macmillan, 1954); Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955–64), vols. 1 and 2; Frank Lawrence Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (University of Chicago Press, 1925).

  [The end of an experiment]: William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (Alfred A. Knopf, 1948); Harold M. Hyman, Lincoln’s Reconstruction: Neither Failure of Vision Nor Vision of Failure (Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, 1980).

  37 [Lincoln’s peroration]: Basler, vol. 8, p. 333.

  [Lincoln’s funeral trip]: Sandburg, op. cit., vol. 4, ch. 76.

  [“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”]: Walt Whitman, The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman (Putnam’s, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 94, 96.

  2. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SLAVERY

  38 [Euphoria at the bush spring]: Laura S. Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work (Arno Press, 1969), pp. 414–15.

  38–9 The leading source on reactions and perceptions of slaves and former slaves, drawn largely from oral interviews and histories made many years after the event, is George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Greenwood Press, 1972), 19 vols. See also Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979); John W. Blassingame, Slave Testimony (Louisiana State University Press, 1977); Norman R. Yetman, ed..Voices from Slavery (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970); Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered (University of North Carolina Press, 1979).

  [Myrta Lockett Avary on her father’s talk to his slaves ]: Myrta Lockett Avary, Dixie After the War (Doubleday, Page, 1906), pp. 183–85; see also, James Roark, Masters Without Slaves (W. W. Norton, 1977), esp. part 3.

  [Blacks’ song in Bexar County]: quoted in Litwack, p. 217.

  Bound for Freedom

  41–2 [Political situation and attitudes following Civil War]: Michael Les Benedict,
A Compromise of Principle (W. W. Norton, 1974), chs. 5–6; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (Alfred A. Knopf, 1970); Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), ch. 3; Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (W. W. Norton, 1959), chs. 18, 19.

  43 [Mantell on Republican leadership]: Martin E. Mantell, Johnson, Grant, and the Politics of Reconstruction (Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 5.

  [Andrew Johnson]: Lately Thomas, The First President Johnson (William Morrow, 1968); Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1930); Eric L. McKitrick, ed., Andrew Johnson (Hill and Wang, 1969).

  [“Fine feathers and gewgaws”]: quoted in Margaret Shaw Royall, AndrewJohnson—Presidential Scapegoat (Exposition Press, 1958), p. 51.

  43–4 [Wade-Johnson mutual assurances]: Brodie, p. 223; David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863–1867 (Louisiana State University Press, 1965), p. 19.

  [Historians’ shifting views of Reconstruction]: Harold M. Hyman, ed., The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), introduction, pp. xvii–lxviii; see also Mark W. Summers, Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity (Princeton University Press, 1984).

  45 [Keller on new nationalized and centralized system]: Morton Keller, Affairs of State (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. vii–viii, 4, 17ff.

  46 [“The only safety of the nation”]: quoted in Beale, p. 27.

  [Amnesty and other measures, late spring 1865]: Stampp, pp. 62–64.

  [Sumner’s confidence in Johnson]: quoted in Donald, Sumner, p. 222 (italics in original).

  47 [Johnson’s break with radicals, other Reconstruction developments]: Stampp, ch. 3 and passim; Hyman; Mantell, chs. 1–5; Howard P. Nash, Jr., Andrew Johnson: Congress and Reconstruction (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972); LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice (Free Press, 1963).

  [Schurz’s lour of the South]: Stampp, pp. 73–80, quoted at p. 78.

  47–8 [Sumner’s exchange with Johnson]: quoted in Donald, Sumner, p. 238; see Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 142–52.

  49 [Proposed terms of Fourteenth Amendment]: quoted in Stampp, p. 136.

  [Sumner’s oration on “The Equal Rights of All”]: Congressional Globe: The Debates and Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress (F. &J. Rives, 1866), February 6, 1866, p. 687.

  [Clara Barton’s testimony]: quoted in Brodie, p. 244.

  [“Irresponsible central directory”]: quoted in Stampp, p. 112.

  [National Union Convention]: Benedict, pp. 191–96.

  51 [Warning to Johnson against “swing around the circle”]: quoted in Thomas, p. 484.

  [Johnson’s campaign]: ibid., pp. 485–99, quoted at pp. 489, 491.

  [Election results, 1866]: Brodie, p. 288; Stampp, pp. 117–19.

  A Revolutionary Experiment

  52 [Reconstruction Congress as querulous, distracted, etc.]: Timothy Otis Howe, quoted in Benedict, op. cit.,p. 239.

  [Stevens on the floor]: Brodie, op. cit.,pp. 309–10.

  [Marx on Johnson]: quoted in Keller, op. cit., p. 63.

  53 [Chronology of Radical Reconstruction]: Stampp, op. cit, pp. 144–48.

  [Reconstruction Act Of March 2, 1867]: ibid.,pp. 144–45.

  [Ex parte Milligan]: 4 Wallace 2 (1866), quoted at p. 124.

  54 [Stevens on Milligan]: quoted in W. R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction (St. Martin’s Press, 1963), p. 186.

  [Brock on Milligan]: ibid.

  [Measure limiting Supreme Court jurisdiction]: Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Little, Brown, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 456–64.

  [Court rulings against Southern states seeking to enjoin executive enforcement of the Reconstruction Acts]: State of Georgia v. Stanton, 6 Wallace 50 (1867); State of Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wallace 475 (1867); and see Warren, vol. 2, pp. 465, 472–84, 487–88.

  [Chase’s warning against “collision”]: quoted in Keller, p. 76.

  55 [Impeachment of Andrew Johnson]: Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of AndrewJohnson (W. W. Norton, 1973); Hans L. Trefousse, Impeachment of a President (Universityof Tennessee Press, 1975); James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Little, Brown, 1980); Raoul Berger. Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (Harvard University Press, 1973).

  [Letter to Garfield on constitutional implications of impeachment]: Burke A. Hinsdale to Garfield, September 30, 1867, in Mary L. Hinsdale, ed., Garfield-Hinsdale Correspondence: Correspondence between James Abram Garfield and Burke Aaron Hinsdale (University of Michigan Press, 1949), pp. 107–8.

  [Johnson’s opposition to black suffrage in the South]: see esp. George F. Milton, “The Tennessee Epilogue,” excerpted from Milton, The Age of Hate (Coward-McCann, 1930), reprinted in McKitrick, ed., Andrew Johnson, op. cit., pp. 193–218; Benedict, Compromise of Principle,ch. 5.

  56 [Johnson on being compelled to stand on his rights]: quoted in Stampp, p. 149.

  [Johnson in the impeachment experience]: Thomas, op. cit., pp. 541–607; Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (Regents Press of Kansas, 1979) and sources cited therein; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, op. cit., pp. 486–509.

  [Grant, Johnson, and the Tenure of Office Act]: William S. McFeely, Grant (W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 262–73.

  56–7 [Surratt episode]: Thomas, pp. 349–52, 538–40.

  57 [Foreknowledge of balloting on Johnson’s removal]: Trefousse, p. 169; see also, Ralph J.Roske, “The Seven Martyrs?,” American Historical Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (January 1959), pp. 323–30.

  57-8 [Trumbull on possible implications of impeachment]: quoted in Stampp, p. 153; Stampp’s comment on same, ibid.

  58 [Johnson’s burial]: Milton in McKitrick, pp. 216–17.

  [Election of 1868]: Mantell, op. cit., chs. 6–9; William B. Hesseltinc, Ulysses S. Grant—Politician (Frederick Ungar, 1935), chs. 5–6; John Hope Franklin, “Election of 1868,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 2, pp. 1247–1300.

  [Grant on the summer of 1868]: quoted in Mantell, p. 129.

  59 [1868 Republican platform]: reprinted in Schlesinger, vol. 2, pp. 1270–71, quoted at p.1270.

  [1868 election results]: Mantell, pp. 143–49; Schlesinger, vol. 2, p. 1300.

  “I’se Free. Ain’t Wuf Nuffin”

  60 [Sumner upon his reelection]: quoted in Donald, Sumner, op. cit., p. 348.

  [Implications of election results of 1867]: Benedict, Compromise of Principle, op. cit., pp. 272–75;James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 378, 382,412.

  60 [American Freedman editorial]: quoted in McPherson, p. 399.

  [Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment]: William Gillette, The Right to Vote (Johns Hopkins Press, 1965).

  60–1 [Henry Wilson on Republican struggle to give equal rights]: quoted in Benedict, p. 326, which is also the source of the statement of the other Republican senator (Samuel C. Pomeroy).

  61 [Benedict on the political fortunes of the Republican party]: ibid., p. 327.

  [Iowa editor on Phillips]: Keokuk Gate City, quoted in McPherson, p. 368.

  [New York Times and World on the radicals]: ibid.

  61–2 [American Anti-Slavery Society on Fifteenth Amendment]: ibid., p. 427.

  62 [Child on Fifteenth Amendment]: ibid., p. 428.

  [Southern politics in Reconstruction]: Stampp, op. cit.,ch. 6, quoted on black leaders at p. 167.

  [Reaction of planters to new prestige and power of freedmen]: Litwack, op. cit., pp. 553–54.

  62–3 [Bryce on corruption in the South]: James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (Macmillan, 1924), vol. 2, pp. 498–99.

  63 [Results of black-and-white rule in South]: Stampp, p. 172.

  [S
outh Carolina constitution]: ibid., pp. 172–73.

  [McPherson on education of black schoolchildren]: McPherson, p. 394.

  63–4 [Education and black children]: ibid., pp. 386–407; W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (Russell & Russell, 1935), ch. 15; Luther P.Jackson, “The Educational Efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedmen’s Aid Societies in South Carolina,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 8, no. 1 (January 1923), pp. 1–40;James M. Smallwood, Timeof Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans During Reconstruction (Kennikat Press, 1981), ch. 4; Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 92–118.

  64 [Comments of Louisiana legislator and Southern white woman on schooling for blacks]: quoted in Litwack, pp. 485, 486.

  [Paducah Herald on ruining blacks as laborers]: quoted in McPherson, p. 395.

  [Mayor of Enterprise on teacher’s arrest]: quoted in Litwack, p. 487.

  [“Forty acres and a mule”]: McPherson, pp. 407–16; Smallwood, ch. 3; Eric Foner, “Reconstruction and the Crisis of Free Labor,” in Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 97–127; Foner, “Thaddeus Stevens, Confiscation and Reconstruction,” in Foner, pp. 128–49; Escott, op. cit., pp. 150–51.

  [South Carolina black, black preacher, Virginia black on land]: quoted in Litwack, pp. 392, 402, 403, respectively.

  65 [Black leaders’emphasis on liberal, middle-class values]: ibid., pp. 520–22; Harold M. Hyman, ed., New Frontiers of the American Reconstruction (University of Illinois Press, 1966), pp.73–74, 79; Eugene Genovese, In Red and Black: Marxist Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History (Pantheon Books, 1971), esp. pp. 139–42; Howard M. Shapiro, “Land Reform During Reconstruction: A Case Study in the Sociology of History,” Williams College, 1981.

  65–6 [Means of keeping blacks from voting]: William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1879 (Louisiana State University Press, 1979), chs. 2, 12.

  66 [Gibson County, Tennessee]: ibid., p. 29.

  [The Klan and federal action]: see Allan W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Harper & Row, 1971), passim.