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West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War Paperback – May 1, 2008

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 616 ratings
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From the author of the popular "Letters from an American" newsletter:  a sweeping story of how Northerners, Southerners, and Westerners together created modern America in the years from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller
 
The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. Instead, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners gradually hammered out a national identity that united three regions into a country that could become a world power. Ultimately, the story of Reconstruction is about how a middle class formed in America and how its members defined what the nation would stand for, both at home and abroad, for the next century and beyond.

A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book stretches the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson—whose daily "Letters From an American" Substack newsletter has attracted a wide following—ties the North and West into the post–Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South, encompassing the significant people and events of this profoundly important era.

By weaving together the experiences of real individuals—from a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, and a labor organizer to Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull—who lived during the decades following the Civil War and who left records in their own words, Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    396 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    9.22 x 6.04 x 1.06 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0300136307
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0300136302
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Included in the Washington Post Book World's Holiday Guide (2007)
Selected as a 2008 AAUP University Press Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries.

“Richardson tells a different story about the United States as a whole during a reconceptualized period of ‘Reconstruction’ after the Civil War.”―Sheldon Hackney, University of Pennsylvania


“Highly original, deeply researched, and important, West from Appomattox has the added advantage of being extremely well written: Heather Cox Richardson’s prose is clear, accessible, and compelling.”―Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago


"With a marvelous sense of scope, narrative lucidity, and thorough research, Heather Richardson makes the convincing case that Americans still live in the world that Reconstruction built―or left partly unbuilt. A skilled historian of political economy, Richardson has here written a new and important synthesis of late-nineteenth-century American society enmeshed in a great struggle to determine just what kind of country the Civil War had wrought. This book is deeply informed and a good read; it spurs our effort to help Americans realize that their reading must not stop with Appomattox."―David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory


"A truly fresh reconsideration―and a smart and wonderfully written one―of Reconstruction. Richardson pulls back to a genuinely national perspective, and in doing so gives us a strikingly original view of this vitally important time in the national story."―Elliott West, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

About the Author

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College and the author of The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post–Civil War North. 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press; Illustrated edition (May 1, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 396 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300136307
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300136302
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.22 x 6.04 x 1.06 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 616 ratings

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Heather Cox Richardson

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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
616 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Michael L. Burwell
5.0 out of 5 stars A Riveting Account
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2021
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An altogether worthwhile read. Writing in a crisp, eminently readable style, the author succeeds in peeling back the veneer of post-Civil War America as "the land of the free and the home of the brave," where freedom, equality, and opportunity purportedly abounded for anyone with the gumption to go after their dreams. While not denying America's greatness as an experiment in democracy, Cox Richardson does not shirk from pointing out the contradictions and cross-currents that inform the great sweep of American history--in this case the history of the U.S. during the latter half of the 19th century. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who desires to gain a fuller understanding of what America was about during that period and how that legacy has endured to varying degrees right up to the present day. Frankly, I wish I had absorbed this knowledge years ago; nevertheless, I am grateful to have acquired it at all. I congratulate Professor Cox Richardson on performing a valuable service. This appellation applies to her other books as well, particularly the volume with the intriguing title HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR.
12 people found this helpful
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John E. Hayes
5.0 out of 5 stars important book
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2022
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The patterns of thought recognized and articulated in this book are critical to understand in order to bring our current political imbroglio into focus. We are still fighting and re-fighting ideological battles of the past by talking past each other without recognizing the historical roots of our disagreements. This book proves Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s thesis stated in The Cycles of American History that political and social issues re-emerge in cycles, and define the struggle which makes America.
5 people found this helpful
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Timothy Tatar
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but Kindle transfer awful.
Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2024
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Enjoying the content of the book. Unfortunately, the Kindle transfer is very poor. Many of the illustrations are missing due to copyright issues. Apparently, the transfer was done with an optical text converter. All the ffs become a ?. It seems nobody edited the Kindle product.
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3.0 out of 5 stars Beware of Kindle Version
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2023
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I have read excerpts of this book elsewhere, so I don't doubt the quality of the effort. The problem is with the Kindle (digital) book. The publisher did not obtain rights to include certain illustrations in electronic media. They refer you to the printed book to view these images. Unfortunately, this happens THROUGHOUT the book (I stopped counting at ten, then returned it for a refund). Just wanted to let you know in advance so you are not negatively surprised.
4 people found this helpful
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OLD1mIKE
5.0 out of 5 stars Great History of a Transitional Period
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2020
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Incredible Book. Highly recommended for those interested in not only Historical events, but the cultural and political forces behind those changes.

Reconstruction as a complete history of the United States between 1865 to 1900, rather than just the transformation of the Southern states. Issues include: Civil Rights, Labor Unions, Women’s Sufferage, Expansion West, Railroad and Trust Monopolies, Political Parties and all the public agitation going with those issues. By the end of the Spanish American War (1898) the nation had started to unify behind a national identity and an identifiable middle class was emerging.
9 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customergail
5.0 out of 5 stars Not much different than today.
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2022
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When I began reading this book it was as though I was reading a current article. The research was thorough and complete. It should be required reading for every college freshmen.
4 people found this helpful
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Daniel A. French
4.0 out of 5 stars Manifest Destiny, Progressive Style...
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2012
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Heather Cox Richardson's West of Appomattox is a work that puts forth the idea that between Reconstruction and 1901 Americans struggled, yet eventually redefined a vision of their nation. Perhaps the most interesting component of Richardson's work, is that in her research, which included "newspapers, novels, memoirs...histories...paintings...[and] music" she discovered the dominant force for creating American's vision of individualism, which was the American west. Along the way, Richardson's work reveals the roots of Frederick Jackson Turner's vision of America based on a culturally created imagery of individualism.

Richardson's work is organized chronologically, starting with the chapter "Spring 1865: The View From The Civil War" and ending with "1898-1901: Reunion." Two themes emerge early on in the work. First, there was a unifying force between North and South, and that was the West, and a desire to exterminate Indians. Regardless of the philosophical struggle between free-labor and slave-labor, it is clear that the Native Americans were an inconvenience that fit in neither camp's vision of a post-war America.

More central to Richardson's work however, is the vision of a political struggle that would accompany reconstruction. It was government that would have to make a harmonious free-labor society work after the war, and how this was going to happen was the "most important question of the day." Richardson does an admirable job of illustrating the Northerner's cognitive dissonance. On the one hand they believed in government reconstruction, but on the other, they were nervous about the cost of the continued military occupation in the South.

While reconstruction was grinding forward, other northern distractions would begin to shift attention away from reconstruction. The "perceived political danger" posed by immigrant labor, the rising issues of gender, and the plight of urbanization would begin to overtake the issues in the South. Strikers and "lazy African-Americans in southern governments" were incongruent to the hard-working American middle class vision defined by Richardson as free-labor.

By the mid-1870s, Republicans were losing their political grip. Democrats pushed free-labor hot spots with rhetoric that demanded civil-service reform and lower tariffs while the Republicans had "little to offer voters other than their destruction of slavery." When the democrat Wade Hampton won the contentious governorship in South Carolina, and the Republican's had to be removed from their statehouse occupation by force, the end of reconstruction became a foregone conclusion. Hayes's election to the presidency, predicated on his bowing to the will of the South, shifted the attention of the middle-class permanently away from the South.

By the mid-1880s, it was clear that Richardson's mainstream Americans had rejected a government that "responded to the special interests" and began to accept the idea of a Progressive government that would benefit the "general interest" of the people. Government intervention was okay, as long as it was intervention that ran parallel to mainstream America's free-labor ideals. This was an ominous sign for labor, Indians, and African-Americans who did fit into the middle class's vision of America.

While the Indians never would fit into the mainstream American vision, African-Americans with the help of Booker T. Washington would at least placate the middle class. The vision of how society and technology should be was well represented in 1893 at the World's Fair in Chicago, a harbinger in the belief of American progress. While Populists and organized labor seemed to some to be a hedge against big government, the contemporaneous spin machines viewed them as a threat to "place government into the hands of a mob." McKinley's victory began to define what the mainstream's vision was.

Meanwhile, gold in Bonanza Creek, John Muir's promotion of nature, and Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders would begin to coalesce the ideal that the true individualist was found in the West. With the blending of Progressivism and Manifest Destiny, the Cuban crisis was a timely event. Appealing to both the humanitarian and expansionist American emotion, America was "primed for a struggle." Richardson begins to round out her Western thesis by bringing "impatient Westerners" into the Cuban fold. Frank James, Buffalo Bill, and Roosevelt's cowboys were itching for a fight in Cuba--the real individualists, the real Americans.

While Frederick Jackson Turner may have closed the frontier, Teddy Roosevelt reopened it, and for Richardson, it was that opening that redefined America. Richardson's thesis, that Americans "hammered out a national identity" between 1865 and 1901 that united around an image of rugged American West individualism is on its surface a Turnerian view of America, but Turner based his thesis on the tangible--land. Richardson's frontier is a vision, emotionally constructed by American's searching for redefinition after 1865.

Her research, based on primary cultural sources, goes far to back her argument and she brings her thesis forward to today, with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's Western persona as proof of the enduring nature of the cowboy imagery. Today's candidates such as the maverick and the rogue along with Texas Rick Perry continue to attest to the popularity of the Western image in both politics and American popular culture.
46 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Rebel Yell
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear reconstruction story.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 18, 2018
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Thank you Heather
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