Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War

by Eric Foner

Studies the interrelationship of social, political, and intellectual forces shaping the Civil War era, and the ways historians have interpreted them

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Civil War, American Civil War

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, Foner focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. His Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, won the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes and remains the standard history of the period. His latest book published in 2010 is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

In 2006 Foner received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians.

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Here, indeed, is the tragic irony of that conflict. Each side fought to defend a distinct vision of the good society, but each vision was destroyed by the very struggle to preserve it." (33)

"The labor movement, articulating an ideal stretching back to the republican tradition of the American Revolution, equated freedom with ownership of productive property. To the abolitionists, expressing a newer, liberal definition, freedom meant self-ownership -- that is, simply not being a slave. It is one of the more tragic ironies of this complex debate that, in the process of attempting to liberate the slave, the abolitionists did so much to promote a new and severely truncated definition of freedom for both blacks and whites." (64)

"So, in the end, Reconstruction came full circle. It began with southerners trying to adjust to the northern system of free labor. It ended with northerners having to accept the reality of conflict between capital and labor -- a reality that southerners, white and black, had understood all along." (127)

[Sean Chick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a frustrating book in many ways. Foner aims high then shoots low with a series of conventional essays. There is little about the Confederate experience. That being said, the overall argument that anti-slavery rhetoric damaged the nascent labor movement is convincing.