ABSTRACT
The aim of Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 is to present the social, political, and economic developments of Reconstruction, clearly detailing the great potential of the post-Civil War era and analyzing the key players in its successes and failures. The views of the Dunning School have since been discredited as racist nonsense, and revisionist historians, starting with W. E. B. Du Bois, have provided a truer picture of the possibilities, successes, and missed opportunities in this important part of America's past. Earlier social scientists like Herbert Spencer and Ulrich Phillips-influenced by the same racist logic that informed the Dunning School-had portrayed slavery as a social good, a generous system designed to discipline, civilize, and uplift black people, and to maintain peace between whites and blacks. Foner concludes that although Reconstruction never lived up to the ideals of the Radical Republicans,* there were nevertheless a number of valuable developments during this period.
