The Story of the Reconstruction
by
[Bobbs-Merrill, $5.00]
IF you want to see what happens when centralized government, with the very best of motives, decides that local government is incapable of doing its own economic planning and that individuals are no longer fit to handle their own affairs, here is your chance. You need not go to Germany, Russia, or Italy to see the totalitarian state in operation. Simply read Mr. Henry’s book — a notably fair book without political bias. If, then, the facts seem incredible, ask someone who went through it. . . . It can’t happen here? Your father or grandfather saw it happen here. And you, if you are living in the United States to-day, are still paying the bill every time you buy a pack of cigarettes, an automobile, or a bottle of soda pop.
In 1865 the War ended. Grant’s fine courtesy to Lee at Appomattox is well known. Sherman’s terms to Joseph E. Johnston are, perhaps, the most practically kind and workable ever granted a defeated army. In essence, both said, ‘The rebuilding of the South is your problem. You know your people better than we do. Let’s get going again — and good luck to you!’
The ending of that war by the men who fought it is a proud thing in human history. The Peace, made later by the men who talked it, still stalks horridly through the land.
Lincoln, who might have shown the world a really good and great peace, was dead. Andrew Johnson, honest, dogged, humorless, tactless, tried to carry out the Lincoln policies. He might have done it — but the Uplifters came.
They came, honest, sincere, leaving their own affairs, ready to sacrifice themselves in the sheer, compelling exaltation of minding somebody else’s business. Men fly with wings. They will probably isolate the causes of cancer. They can speak across a world. But they cannot learn to let other men alone.
The honest, decent reformers thronged Washington. And the political gentlemen fell into line — unobtrusively edging toward the head of the parade. If the voters wanted to do good, Congress would do good. The South should have a new deal of the cards. Everybody should hold aces — and the government would do good until every ward heeler in the back room was on the Federal payroll.
The white vote in the South was largely disenfranchised. But the Negro vote — huge, enthusiastic, agreeable — could be handled.
Forty acres and a mule! Uncle Sam in a gold top hat, sitting on his gold chair and passing out gold eagles to every voter who voted right! Millions of black voters who could be held forever with promises. And all in the name of doing good! . . . The politicians began to believe it themselves — and that’s deadly for politicians.
It took ten years — ten years of rape, looting, misery, sincerity, meanness, heroism. And the year 1876, when the men and women of the South rose up and threw off the soggy incubus of Federal government and took their business into their own hands, is a prouder year for Americans than 1776. . . . Americans do that, though, every so often.
The book will make you thoughtful. It will make you angry. It will make you proud. There is no reference in it, even by implication, to present-day America, But if you can read it without applying it, there is something wrong with you.
CLEMENTS RIPLEY