The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866.

By Thomas and Debra Goodrich. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001. Pp. viii, 312. $26.95, ISBN 0-8117-0487-4.)

In 1990 Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War strengthened the already brisk book trade in studies of the Civil War. Like Burns's documentary, however, most of these popular works on the Civil War end abruptly with Appomattox or Lincoln's assassination. Although the complicated Reconstruction era has been the subject of much research within the academy, most popular authors only allude to the changes that followed Lee's surrender to Grant. Historians such as Eric Foner have lamented this pattern, suggesting that the legacies of emancipation and Reconstruction have had as much of an impact on the United States as the Civil War itself. Scholars and general readers alike will thus be interested in Thomas and Debra Goodrich's account of the year following Lee's surrender to Grant, which is told from a decidedly "southern" point of view.

The Day Dixie Died concentrates on the months following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Focusing on the South, the Goodriches divide their book into three sections. Part One begins with the reaction to Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination, covers the search for John Wilkes Booth and Jefferson Davis, and ends with the surrender of Kirby Smith's Army of the Trans-Mississippi and the execution of Booth's alleged co-conspirators. Part Two chronicles the growing tension and violence between returning Confederate soldiers, newly arrived Union troops, and recently emancipated freedpeople. Part Three emphasizes the poverty and desolation of the South, the rampant lawlessness of the region, and the paranoia and fear that exploded into savage racial violence.

The central thesis of The Day Dixie Died is that the months following the end of the Civil War were a terrible tragedy for the South, a tragedy that would have been greatly alleviated if Abraham Lincoln had lived. "[A]s a consequence" of Lincoln's death, the authors write, "the defeated South was plunged into decades of mistrust, hatred, and violence" (p. 256). The Goodriches successfully prove that the South indeed suffered during this period, but they are not persuasive in arguing that a full second term by Lincoln would have made a difference. In part, this is because relatively little attention is given to those who shaped government policy in Lincoln's absence--Andrew Johnson and Congress.

The prose, laced with lengthy quotations from actual participants, is especially well written. Although the Goodriches would have benefited from greater research in government records housed at the National Archives, they have clearly done extensive research in southern libraries and depositories. Furthermore, they make excellent use of newspapers dating from the period. However, they were not so thorough with the secondary literature. Important works by Foner, Leon F. Litwack, and Dan T. Carter, among other recent monographs on the period, are absent from their bibliography. This may be intentional, since much of the book seems deliberately at odds with reigning interpretations of the Reconstruction period. For example, instead of focusing on white southern violence against Unionists and blacks, the Goodriches devote a great deal of attention to the killing of Confederate leaders and attacks on freedpeople by Union troops. While this approach is sometimes brave and refreshing, the book's obvious sympathy for the white South will alienate some readers.

The Goodriches have written an accessible account of the year following the war's conclusion that will surely be read widely at Civil War roundtables, with a cast of characters who are instantly familiar: Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, Robert Anderson, Henry Wirz, and Edmund Ruffin. The Day Dixie Died does not, however, successfully bridge the gap between popular and scholarly work on the Reconstruction period.

WILLIAM D. CARRIGAN
Rowan University