Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Presumed First Edition, First printing [stated]. Hardcover. 23 cm, 533 pages, footnotes, bibliography, index, usual library markings, DJ taped to boards, pocket removed from rear endpaper, edges soiled. Eric Louis McKitrick (July 5, 1919 - April 24, 2002) was an American historian, best known for The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 (1993) with Stanley Elkins, which won the Bancroft Prize in 1994. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in 1949, an M.A. in 1951, and a Ph.D. in 1959. He taught at the University of Chicago and at Rutgers University's Douglass College in the 1950s, and Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 before retiring as an emeritus professor of history.[2] In 1973-74 he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University and in 1979-80 the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. An essential work on the Civil War period, this classic of Reconstruction scholarship challenges the longstanding myth of Andrew Johnson as misunderstood statesman, revealing him as a small-minded, vindictive, and stubborn man, whose rigid determination to defy Northern majority opinion thwarted the post-war reunion of North and South. Derived from a review posted on line, McKitrick’s revolutionary book, published with America in the midst of a defining civil rights movement, re-casts Johnson as an inflexible, fractious, narrow-minded racist. The author’s treatment of Johnson is not savage or unfair, but it is unrelenting. Although it proves to be more a study of his impact on Reconstruction, this book is useful in understanding this now-unloved former president. McKitrick’s work is well researched, well written, detailed and convincing. It is a scholarly work and its central themes are readily accessible, to scholar and lay readers alike. In these first dozen or so pages McKitrick convincingly explains the rationale for his reassessment of Johnson’s image. Just prior to publication of this book Johnson was rated only slightly below “middle of the pack.” McKitrick’s analysis of Johnson’s personality is also intriguing and insightful. At one point McKitrick compares Johnson’s and Lincoln’s personalities side by side, observing similarities in their backgrounds and highlighting the traits which McKitrick’s analysis of Johnson’s personality is also intriguing and insightful. At one point McKitrick compares Johnson’s and Lincoln’s personalities side by side, observing similarities in their backgrounds and highlighting the traits which aided one in becoming a great president and relegating the other to the presidential cellar. Overall, Eric McKitrick’s book is a revolutionary and penetrating study. In many ways it is a co-biography of the Johnson presidency and Congress during his term in office. Strictly as a review of the Reconstruction Era (and of Johnson’s impact and influence during the period) this book is invaluable. Condition: Fair / Fair.
Keywords: Abraham Lincoln, African-Americans, Charles Sumner, Civil Rights, Civil War, Impeachment, Andrew Johnson, Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant, Presidents, Impeachment
[Book #34165]
Price: $45.00