A scarce, beautifully preserved original printing of this detailed record of the earliest official attempts to assess the damage to the war-ravaged South, as well as plans for the rebuilding of its infrastructure and economy. The book is divided into several main sections, in which various states and regions are discussed individually: Tennessee (including detailed records related to Andrew Johnson's tenure as military governor and proposed legislation abolishing slavery, as well as a resolution memorializing Abraham Lincoln two days after his death); Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina; Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama; and Florida, Louisiana, Texas.
The text, which includes extensive transcripts of testimony before Congress, provides an immediate, fascinating chronicle of the bitter feelings and grave challenges that lay ahead in the long process of reunifying the United States. Detailed discussions explore and illuminate the individual situations and needs of each former Confederate state, from the economic outlook to education to lingering racism and pro-Confederate sentiment to the problems of integrating newly freed blacks into society at large. Other topics include such historic, often contentious issues as compensation for emancipated slaves and property destroyed during the war; the necessity of the Freedman's Bureau in the South; "evidence of general hostility and occasional cruelty toward freedmen"; effect of disloyal newspapers and politicians; pardons and executive leniency; increase of hostility after Lee's surrender; indications of hostility toward the Union; the necessity of U.S. troops in the South; and many others.
Among those who provided testimony were scores of military officers from both sides of the conflict (the testimony is indexed), the most prominent of whom was Robert E. Lee, who spoke at length about reconstruction in Virginia. (When asked, for instance, about the likely reaction by Virginia secessionists to a constitutional amendment extending the vote to blacks, Lee responded, "I think, so far as I can form an opinion, in such an event they would object.... I think it would excite unfriendly feelings between the two races....") George Armstrong Custer spoke at length on reconstruction in Texas and Louisiana, bluntly noting that "I do not regard the people in that portion of the southern country in which I have been as in a proper condition, or as manifesting a proper state of feeling, to be restored to their former rights and privileges under the federal government." The noted nurse Clara Barton, who later founded the Red Cross, spoke in detail about the poor conditions in which blacks were compelled to live following the war.
The ink stamp noted above is that of Isaac Dyer, Skowhegan, Maine, a prominent Maine politician and Civil War veteran. From his entry in the 1903 history Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the State of Maine: "General Isaac Dyer, Postmaster of Skowhegan, ex-State Senator, and a Civil War veteran, was born in Canaan, Me., November 1, 1820.... General Dyer's military record began in December 1861, when he accepted ... the appointment of Lieut-Colonel of the Fifteenth Maine Volunteer Infantry.... He joined with his regiment the Nineteenth Army Corps under General Butler, which included some other Maine regiments. They proceeded to the Lower Mississippi, where they took part in the important military operations of the Gulf Department, and later under General Banks in the Red River expedition.... Colonel Dyer ... found plenty of active service, taking part, among other engagments, in the short but fierce encounter at Pleasant Hill, when Banks's troops, then eight thousand strong, repulsed some twenty thousand Confederates under Kirby Smith. In the autumn of 1862 he went with his regiment to Pensacola, Fla., where he succeeded General Neal Dow as commander of the port. Returning to Louisiana in 1863, he held command of the fort at Carrollton.... In July 1864, the Fifteenth Maine was ordered to Fortress Monroe. Afterward transferred to General Sheridan's command, it operated under that dashing leader in the Shenandoah Valley and in the exciting events of the campaign that immediately preceded the end of the war.... In March 1865, he was brevetted Brigadier-General, and in September 1865 was honorably discharged at Charleston, S.C. He then returned to Skowhegan, Me., and resumed business life as a member of the firm of Dyer & Cushing...." The page that bears the stamp also bears at the top the pencil name "Fessenden" and, at the bottom, "Isaac Dyer"--indicating a strong possibility that the volume was originally presented to Dyer by William Pitt Fessenden (1806 - 1869), a Maine senator who briefly served as Secretary of the Treasury in 1864 - 1865 before resuming his seat in Congress.
Significant and quite uncommon, particularly in such an appealing state of preservation and with an association of this note.
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