Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

The Reconstruction Presidents. By Brooks D. Simpson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. xii, 276 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-7006-0896-6.)

Brooks D. Simpson provides here a welcome review of the reconstruction policies and achievements of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes. His underlying theme is that presidents in our democracy are limited in their options to what the public will tolerate. Yet he points out early that they are not total prisoners of their environment; they themselves can help determine what is possible. 1

Simpson provides a good, even masterly account of the Lincoln and Johnson administrations, based on the latest and best work of his peers. There is little new in these sections, nor should there necessarily be in a work that seeks to interpret the work of four presidents. He does not specifically mention historians' differences as to whether Lincoln was a secret radical on the subject of black equality, but he agrees implicitly with those such as William C. Harris who see Lincoln as a moderate pragmatist still in transition at his death. "It is fascinating yet futile," says Simpson, "to ponder what Lincoln might have done [about black suffrage], in part because Lincoln himself did not know what he was going to do." . . .

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