The work under review is the latest published result of those investigations in the field of Reconstruction history which were begun some years ago under the direction of Professor Dunning of Columbia University. If carried to completion Dr. Hamilton's promises to be one of the most useful of those studies. In North Carolina as in other Southern states the Reconstruction can be explained only after an examination of ante-bellum and Civil War conditions, so in this work Dr. Hamilton has first given a summary of political conditions before 1865, with special reference to the development of the secession movement and to the rise of a peace party during the war. The second chapter is devoted to an account of the two attempts at reconstruction during the war—one by natives from within, the other an attempt by President Lincoln to set up the Stanley government. Social and economic conditions at the close of the war are also described in order to complete the background of the Reconstruction. The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed history of the "Johnson" government, its overthrow by Congress, and the inauguration of the new regime under the Reconstruction Acts. The volume closes with the second coming into power of Governor W. W. Holden in. 1868, leaving for later treatment the working out in North Carolina of the congressional plan of Reconstruction.
In making this study the author has evidently exhausted the material relating to his subject. He has used not only the stock sources, but it seems that he has made an examination of practically all of the newspapers of the state, and of the manuscript archives of the state—a source that none of those who have previously worked in the Reconstruction field have been able to explore. To the reviewer it appears that the use of these sources has been careful and the interpretation judicious. The material has been digested and condensed in order to avoid overloading the text with details. A more extended use of the correspondence in the better Northern newspapers would have given sidelights upon conditions in North Carolina that could not be had from local newspapers.
A work of this kind must, of course, go again over ground already partially explored by previous workers on similar subjects. The marked originality of Dr. Hamilton's treatment consists in its being an account of affairs in North Carolina, a state of the Upper South which had its own peculiar problems, distinct from those of the Lower South which have been already described. In North Carolina the problem of the negro, for instance, was far from being as grave as in the Lower South. This allows other factors to become more important and makes possible a marked political division of the whites before, during, and after the war. Dr. Hamilton does his best work in his treatment of
