Reviewed by Christian G. Samito | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 28.2

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Reviewed by Christian G. Samito | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 28.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

*Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction*. By Mitchell Snay. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xii + 218 pp. Photos, notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00 (cloth).
This well-researched book brings a fresh perspective to Reconstruction Era historiography by comparing Irish nationalists in the United States, white racists in the South, and southern black freedpeople during the 1860s and 1870s. Snay links their ethnic and nationalist perspectives to the political culture of those two decades to highlight continuities between antebellum and post–Civil War America, explore class tension in the context of ethnic aspirations, and begin restoring Irish Americans to the history of Reconstruction.	1
The first chapter introduces the subject groups. The particularly interesting second chapter examines the culture and operation of the Fenian Brotherhood, Union League, and Ku Klux Klan. In the remaining three chapters, Snay investigates land and its role in creating collective identities, the potential and limitations of ethnicity as a basis for nationalist identity, and the use of civic nationalism to forge collective identities.	. . .

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