John Patrick Daly

In The War After the War: A New History of Reconstruction, John Patrick Daly argues, “After the Civil War there was a distinct new war in the South and that understanding Reconstruction as a separate war reshapes how we understand one of the most important periods in American history” (pg. 8). He continues, “In geographic, military, and political terms, the war of 1865 – 1877 was distinct from the American Civil War. It had uniquely southern goals and was fought at that regional level, for control of local governments, between two southern blocs…: a biracial coalition and a large body of triumphant ex-Confederate extremists” (pg. 15-16). Daly draws upon original research as well as a survey of secondary sources to synthesize a compelling account that alternates between the local, with focuses on individual acts of violence, to the state-level, with battles between ex-Confederate militias and duly-elected biracial coalition governments, to the federal, with a focus on how Congress and the executive branch abandoned Reconstruction little by little, handing victory to ex-Confederate insurgents.

Daly structures his examination into five chapters. The first examines the massacre phase in the immediate aftermath of Appomattox. He argues, “The violence of 1865 to 1867 was anything but random. It was a continuation of the guerilla race war and Home Guard actions of the last three years of the American Civil War. It had the direct object of limiting and or even reversing the changes brought by that conflict and maintaining the racial and political order of the Old South” (pg. 53). The second and third chapters examine the guerilla phase of the Southern Civil War, in which biracial coalitions resisted the KKK and other armed militias that struck and withdrew into the populace. Daly writes, “The biracial coalitions, however, put up their best fight in the guerilla phase of the war when vigorous and creative governors and state militias temporarily crushed the KKK on the battlefield in several states, only to be outmaneuvered by ex-Confederate extremists later” (pg. 61). He continues, “The ex-Confederate extremists aimed their violence primarily against supporters of African American rights, but their efforts also constituted an assault on the free press, truth, and memory, as well as civil rights and democracy” (pg. 83). Daly describes how ex-Confederate white supremacists destabilized the South in order to delegitimize the biracial coalition governments. Chapter four looks at what Daly describes as the paramilitary phase, in which ex-Confederates engaged in prolonged, organized armed resistance to Reconstruction goals and legitimately elected governments. Building upon his prior examination of the guerilla phase, Daly argues, “Without a strong and active federal military occupation and an economically independent and armed African American community, ex-Confederate extremist warfare overwhelmed democracy and civil rights in the South” (pg. 122). Further, “The white supremacist memory of fighting biracial armies in 1865-1877 drove many in the next generation to stay armed and pathologically vigilant against any signs of African American independence or interracial cooperation, let alone any resistance to the victory of ex-Confederate extremists” (pg. 138). Finally, Daly concludes with a summary of Reconstruction as a war, comparing it to other sectional conflicts around the world. He argues, “The separate but related American and Southern Civil Wars should be studied in the context of these protracted, complex, and messy wars” (pg. 147).

Daly’s work builds upon the prior scholarship of Eric Foner, Steven Hahn, Stephen Budiansky, and Nicholas Lemann as well as scholars who focused on individual incidents, including LeeAnna Keith, Fox Butterfield, Justin A. Nystrom, Charles Lane, and Richard Zuczek. The War After the War helps to reexamine the Civil War and how it left civil rights an unsettled matter, setting the stage for further civil rights clashes a century later and continued debate about who we venerate in society to this day. Daly concludes, “Reconstruction is ironically the last unreconstructed part of America’s racial memory, but a wave of new history is changing the popular view of the era” (pg. 142). This book is part of the growing body of scholarship to rectify that.… (mehr)