Michael Chesson offers the following thoughtful, and thought-provoking, comment. When I read the documents of early reconstruction in Virginia (I am thinking here, among other things, of the super documentary collection published by the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, now under the editorial direction of Dr. Leslie Rowland), I am struck by the resonance between Republican Free Labor ideology and the Southern pro-slavery argument. As an aside, I have found the introduction to the pro-slavery argument produced by Paul Finkelman for Bedford St. Martin to be an especially powerful and intelligent analysis. Its commendably short, the documents are well selected, and Finkelman's introductory front matter is elegantly written and incisive. Its not the kind of scholarship for which most of us get much credit, but I've learned as much from reading works like Finkelman's than I have from a good many of the over-hasty monographs produced under the pressures of the tenure process. Both Republican military officers over seeing the occupation of Virginia, and the paternalist, unrepentent former slave owners among the occupied, could agree that the former slaves were ill-suited for citizenship. They disagreed about *why* the former slaves could not be trusted with self-government. For the Republican officers, the character of the former slaves had been corrupted by the exigencies of the institution itself. Slavery, they argued, created the wrong kind of incentives to instill the deep work ethic that undergirded the "Free Labor" ideology and, they thought, produced the good citizen. For all too many of the former slave owners, it was not the institution of slavery that debilitated the character of the former slaves, but rather their natural racial essence. But either way, whether one emphasized nature or nurture, both could agree that in the short run, the former slaves required the superintending intervention of benevolent whites. And too, faced with the obstinate recalcitrance of some former slaves, that superintending benevolence just might require due application of coercive force. For their own good, of course. Of course. To read the situation as I am suggesting above does tend to deflate the heroism of just about everybody involved. I'd submit that it even colors the interpretations of some former slaves--take a look, for example, at the Virignia chapters of Booker T. Washington's UP FROM SLAVERY (granted, Washington was writing for a particular audience, and with a particular rhetorical agenad.) Given the anti-heroic nature of the historical narratives that this historical situation permits, I suppose its not too surprising that we have so few dramatic works of the kind that Lemann has given us. All best, Kevin >What I was getting at is not the way in which ex-Rebels regrouped and managed >to defeat Reconstruction, drive out the carpetbaggers and scalawags, and >terrorize blacks; but why they got away with it. Why were southern whites allowed >to do what they did? Yes, many books have been written about this question >and Reconstruction generally, as another poster suggested, but like Lemann's >Redemption all too often the focus is on racist, violent, embittered, >unreconstructed Southern whites. Who were, and some still are, if you've read Tony >Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, all of those things. Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D. Department of History James Madison University To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html