By April 1865, the Southern planters' dreams of perpetuat- ing slavery in an independent republic had vanished. Secession had cost the South a quarter of a million men dead and nearly $3 billion in slave property when three and a half million black laborers were freed. As some Southern anti-Secessionists had prophesied, the Civil War ended in the destruction of the "pecul- iar institution" it was intended to make secure.
Before Appomattox, the planters had identified the South's entire...
Eight or nine years ago, during a classroom discussion of the federal government's retreat in the 1870s from its commit- ment to protect black civil and political rights in the South, a student offered a remark that remains etched in my memory. "This time," he said, "the story will be different." Having grown up during the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, his genera- tion, he asserted, was "more enlightened" than its forebears and would make sure that no backsliding...
the Literary Guild-of Claude G. Bowers'
THE TRAGIC ERA: The Revolution after Lincoln (Houghton Mifflin, 1929, cloth; 1930, paper), the Southern view reached its widest audience.
To rebut Bowers' popular anti-Negro, antiradical, anticarpetbagger, anti-scalawag book, black historian W. E. B. Du Bois six years later published his ground-breaking work, BLACK RECON- STRUCTION (Harcourt, 1935; Kraus re- print, 1976).
Du Bois's radically different-some thought alarmingly radical-interpreta- tion garnered...
public agencies and private institutions
"Religion in America"
The Gallup Opinion Index (no. 145), prepared the American Institute of Public Opinion, 53 Bank St., Princeton, N.J. 08540. 118 pp. $3.25.
Many social commentators have as- sumed that the age of "permissive- ness" and relaxed moral standards has prompted Americans to abandon their churches. But according to a Gallup survey, a strong religious climate still exists in the United States.
Some 38 percent of all...
A comic, detached ambivalence lies cism. (Still, he found the Church's at the heart of Evelyn Waugh's work. Index of forbidden books a "conven- He immersed himself in the glitter- ient excuse for not reading Sartre.") ing, sordid swirl of prewar England He came out of a Victorian middle- but at the same time believed it class family but chose the high life would be "very wicked indeed to do among the titled rich, the merely anything to fit a boy for the modem rich, and the leisured...
Were our Presidents right or wrong tions-and others-remain elusive,
in involving the United States in subject to debate likely to be re-
Vietnam? Did our leaders adopt the newed with each generation of histo-
best strategy for fighting the war? rians, as after other U.S. wars.
Were they genuinely seeking a corn- From the vast literature dealing
promise peace? with Vietnam, only a few dozen
The answers to these big ques- books covering the origins, conduct,
The Wilson QuarterlyISpring 1978
178
and ou...
Dom Bonafede, in
National Journal (Dec. 17, 1977), 1730 MReforming the CIA St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Amid dissension within and public antagonism without, the Central Intelligence Agency embarks on its fourth decade uncertain of its "vanguard" role in the American intelligence community. Admiral Stansfield Turner, its sixth director in as many years, has the unenvi- able task of leading the beleaguered agency through an era of reform. His duty: to balance the demands for openness...
Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, in Pub-South in 1980 lie Opinion (Mar.-Apr. 1978), 1150 17th
St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
In 1960, many Americans voted for John F. Kennedy to disprove the notion that a Catholic couldn't be elected President. A similar feeling about Southerners may have helped Jimmy Carter in the 1976 elec- tions. But according to political analysts Scammon and Wattenberg, such issues as region and religion, once resolved in an election, tend to disappear. As a result,...
Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, in Pub-South in 1980 lie Opinion (Mar.-Apr. 1978), 1150 17th
St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
In 1960, many Americans voted for John F. Kennedy to disprove the notion that a Catholic couldn't be elected President. A similar feeling about Southerners may have helped Jimmy Carter in the 1976 elec- tions. But according to political analysts Scammon and Wattenberg, such issues as region and religion, once resolved in an election, tend to disappear. As a result,...
Charles Longstreet Welt- Can't BUY ner, in Policy Review (Fall 1977), 513 C St.
N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
President Carter signed a $14.7 billion housing measure last October, calling it a "giant step forward" for the nation's cities. But the evidence is growing, says Weltner, a federal judge and former congressman, that "throwing federal dollars" at urban problems may be next to useless. As a case in point, he cites his hometown of Atlanta, Ga. (pop. 1.7 million).
Weltner...