Andrew Johnson's good deed: how the tragedy of Reconstruction contained the seeds of the Civil Rights movement.

• Author: Weber, Jennifer
• Position: Book Review

Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction By Eric Foner Knopf, $27.50

Reconstruction is, arguably, the most frustrating period in American history. The Civil War having ended, the possibilities for reshaping the nation were vast. But Abraham Lincoln, who had the political skills, not to mention the political capital, to build a better, fairer nation, was dead. In his place was the insecure incompetent, Andrew Johnson. A former tailor's apprentice from Tennessee whose wife taught him how to write and helped him improve his shaky reading skills, Johnson came into office claiming to have no truck with Southern plantation owners. The planters quickly figured out, though, that if they humbled themselves before the new president, they generally could have their way--at the expense of the freedmen. Among the worst results of their newfound power were "Black Codes," laws adopted in many Southern states in the year after defeat to regulate African Americans. These were particularly odious in Mississippi and South Carolina, whose Black Codes sought to virtually reestablish slavery (for instance, an unemployed black man would be arrested as a vagrant, then hired out by the state to work off the fine). Northern Republicans in Congress, too, had their way with Johnson, pushing him aside (ultimately impeaching him) and passing a series of progressive laws and constitutional amendments. But with the onset of a financial panic in 1873 and Northerners tiring of Reconstruction, this period of promise petered out. Reconstruction ended ignominiously in a political deal over the presidency that ushered in the era of Jim Crow.

To the extent that Americans think about Reconstruction, most tend to consider it as either a missed opportunity for African Americans or a disastrous experience for white Southerners. The truth is, though most Americans rarely think about Reconstruction at all. In Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction, Columbia Professor Eric Foner tries to elevate the period in the public's imagination and to show that for blacks, Reconstruction as a glass half-full rather than one-half empty. Paradoxically, Johnson played crucial role in this. His vanity, stubbornness, and bad judgment--along with white Southerners' refusal to acknowledge defeat, and the full implications of emancipation--may have actually have helped the freed slaves achieve greater political rights for this brief period than they otherwise would...