Books: Ax-Grinder

BLACK RECONSTRUCTION—W. E. Burghardt Du Bois—Harcourt, Brace ($4.50).

Even casual readers of U. S. history books usually have an ordered, although not very detailed, picture of the sequence of events that led up to and followed the Civil War. For them armed conflict began with the guns at Fort Sumter and ended with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. For post-war developments they think of Lincoln's assassination, the attempt to impeach Andrew Johnson, the scandal of carpetbag rule in the South. Generally accepted without question is the historian's characterization of Reconstruction as "The Tragic...

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