_The Aftermath of the Civil War, in Arkansas_. By Powell Clayton, Governor
of Arkansas, 1868 to 1871. Neale Publishing Company, New York, 1915.
Pp. 378.
Looking at the title of this work the student of history would expect that
same scientific treatment which is observed in so many of the
Reconstruction studies. On the contrary, he finds in this a mere volume of
memoirs of a political leader completed in his eighty-second year. The work
gives an account of the author's own administration as governor of Arkansas
"also of those events that commenced before and extended into it, and those
that occurred during that period and continued beyond it."
In view of the fact that he, a man of well-known partisan proclivities, may
be charged with criticising his defenceless and dead contemporaries the
author says that he endeavored to substantiate "every controvertible and
important conclusion." To do this he collected "an immense amount of
documentary evidence" from which he selected the most appropriate for that
purpose. The writer made use of certain documents in the Library of
Congress and had frequent recourse to the _Arkansas Gazette_.
The book as a whole is essentially political history. It is chiefly
concerned with "the Murphy Government," the "Organization and Operations of
the Klu Klux Klan," "Martial Law," and the peculiar situation in the
counties of Crittenden and Conway. The subjects of immigration, education,
state aid to railroads, and the funding of the state debt are all mentioned
but they suffer because of the preference given to the discussion of
political questions. When one has read the book he is still uninformed as
to what was the actual working of the economic and social forces in
Arkansas during this period.
This work, however, is valuable for several reasons. In the first place,
whether the reader agrees with the author or not he gathers from page to
page facts which throw light on other conditions. Moreover, consisting
mainly of a discussion of extracts from various records it is a good source
book for students who have not access to the documents the author has used.
Further it is important to get the viewpoint of the distinguished author
who lived through what he writes of and is now sufficiently far removed
from the struggle to study it somewhat sympathetically.