Description: Collectively examines the Reconstruction policies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes, revealing how they confronted and responded to the complex issues presented during a contested era in American Politics.
Review Quotes:
"A thoughtful reminder both of the limits of the possible in Reconstruction and of the need to expand the agenda of inquiry beyond the concept of race in the minds of the nation's presidents. Simpson has a fine sense of the politics of the age, an age where the demands of politics propelled policy making profoundly."--Phillip Shaw Paludan, author of The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
"A valuable and lively account of Reconstruction as a national policy problem. A very accessible perspective on a complicated, even intractable, episode in American history that highlights the differences in each man's policies and styles of leadership."--Michael Perman, author of The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879