A. J. Langguth, closing out his multi-volume history of America, turns to the twelve years after Lincoln’s assassination. Andrew Johnson’s leniency toward the defeated South clashed with Radical Republicans Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, who wanted deeper protections for freed black Americans. The dispute nearly cost Johnson his presidency through impeachment.
Ulysses Grant’s two terms brought further attempts to reconcile the Union and curb the rising Ku Klux Klan, undermined by corruption. Reconstruction effectively ended in 1877, when federal troops withdrew from the South, a retreat Langguth traces through vivid portraits of the era’s central, often exasperating, figures.
Published 2014
464 pages
$12.05