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Noel Ignatiev's review of two books about Reconstruction, which was the period in American history where the victorious Northern federal government attempted to transform the state and society in the South.
Richard White John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1915. American liberals of the Gilded Age were suspicious of vast corporate wealth, which they saw as a major cause of poverty. / Library of Congress Speaking in New Haven in 1860, Abraham Lincoln told an audience, “I am not ashamed to confess that 25 years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat—just what might happen to any poor man’s son.” After his death, Lincoln’s personal trajectory from log cabin to White House emerged as the ideal American symbol. Anything was possible for those who str...