Robert's Reviews > West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War

I had expected this book to focus more tightly on reconstruction as it transpired in the South. Actually it focuses on the post-Civil War reconstruction of the entire country during the final four decades of the 19th century. Richardson depicts a country in continuous battle over whether the government should remain small and let the cream of society rise to the top or be active in protecting and advancing the special interests of not only former slaves but immigrants, workers, Indians, and women. Her mission is not to take sides in this debate; it is to describe what happened. She argues that the enduring discomfort between the North and South found a pressure relief value in the West, a place where honesty, hard work, faith and family gave Americans a chance to develop an odd kind of heroic individualism which in fact constantly relied upon federal support. She spends a lot of time focusing on the struggle between labor and business, a lot of time on the struggle of women to occupy an equal place in society, and a fair amount of time on the destruction of the indigenous peoples of America. Although she writes a great deal about a variety of Black leaders and common folk, her observations seem somewhat thin. Nonetheless she makes clear that the reaction against Blacks obtaining post-war privileges they previously were denied was fierce and effective. Corruption and White rage undid the best of intentions, and as she presents America, the guiding ethos became the creation of the middle class. Oddly, the capstone figure in this process became Teddy Roosevelt, the Easterner who became known as a Westerner, a man who was both a trust-buster and a Rough Rider. Why he should have been the hood ornament of the middle class is not entirely clear to me, but it had to do with bringing the East and West together…and not spending much time on the South.

I found the writing in the book wordy and wasn’t as interested in the long quotes from famous men and women as Richardson seems to have been. I also wondered if the book were not too ambitious; to cover so much ground, Richardson has to make many sweeping judgments. That can be disconcerting at times and dizzying at times. But she wanted to encapsulate the entirety of a nation’s development in the aftermath of a Great War, and in broad strokes, she achieved her goal.