Mark W. Summers

I'm Vanessa Powell. People think they know me because I'm famous. They think I've got the world at my feet and the husband every woman wants to marry. But fame can be a lonely place and the perfect marriage can be even lonelier. Now someone's come into my life who makes me feel alive. For the first time ever, I'm thinking about what I really want. No matter what the consequences.

"For a generation, scholarship on the Reconstruction era has rightly focused on the struggles of the recently enslaved for a meaningful freedom and defined its success or failure largely in those terms. Summers goes beyond this vitally important question, focusing on Reconstruction's need to form an enduring Union without sacrificing the framework of federalism and republican democracy. This book offers a fresh explanation for Reconstruction's demise and a case for its essential successes as well as its great failures. Indeed, this book demonstrates the extent to which the victors' aims in 1865 were met--and at what cost"--

In his first book, The Plundering Generation, Mark Wahlgren Summers dealt with corruption and the breakdown of ethics in public life from 1849 to 1861. Continuing his look at the post-Civil War years he examines the effects of the war on public ethics, raising important questions about the significance of corruption for policymaking and American political thought during the years 1865 to 1877. Who, thinking of Reconstruction fails to think of corruption? The Grant administration and the Great Barbecue remain inseparable in our minds. From grafting South Carolina Republicans to plundering Tammany Hall delegates, abuses of the public trust were all the fashion. Noting the effect of corruption on national politics, during the era of Reconstruction, Summers nonetheless suggests the corruption issue may have had more important consequences than the misdeeds themselves. Indeed, the very forces that impelled corruption were the ones that defined and limited the character of reform. Official rascality raised the strongest possible argument for a scaled-down, cheap government, a professional civil service, and a retreat from Reconstruction. Without whitewashing villainy or blackguarding the liberal reformers, Summers re-examines the swindles, exposes the exaggerations and the self-interested motives of the accusers, and suggests ways in which the issue itself struck heavier blows at the way Americans governed themselves than did the acts of corruption.

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xv, 362 p. ; 22 cm

"Reconstruction policy after the Civil War, observes Mark Wahlgren Summers, was shaped not simply by politics, principles, and prejudices. Also at work were fears - often unreasonable fears of renewed civil war and a widespread sense that four years of war had thrown the normal constitutional process so dangerously out of kilter that the republic itself remained in peril. In A Dangerous Stir, Summers illuminates the ways in which these fears and anxieties affected the politics of the immediate post-Civil War years."--Jacket.

Why the Civil War Came brings a talented chorus of voices together to recapture the feel of a very different time and place, helping the reader to grasp more fully the commencement of our bloodiest war. From William W. Freehling's discussion of the peculiarities of North American slavery to Charles Royster's disturbing piece on the combatants' savage readiness to fight, the contributors bring to life the climate of a country on the brink of disaster. Mark Summers, for instance, depicts the tragically jubilant first weeks of Northern recruitment, when Americans on both sides were as yet unaware of the hellish slaughter that awaited them. Glenna Matthews underscores the important war-catalyzing role played by extraordinary public women, who proved that neither side of the Mason-Dixon line was as patriarchal as is thought. David Blight reveals an African-American world that "knew what time it was," and welcomed war.