The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976 Page: 353

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Book Reviews 353
author comments, "Louisiana government has never been simon-pure, and
the Reconstruction years were not much worse than those to follow"
(p. 201).
The vast majority of Louisiana Republicans were black. The dominant
white element in the Radical party was largely a group of so-called Carpet-
baggers, men from the North like Governor Henry Clay Warmoth who had
settled in the state. The number of Scalawags, the native white Republicans,
was never large; there were probably fewer than one thousand outside New
Orleans and no more than twenty-five hundred in the state.
Organized in such secret societies as the Knights of the White Camelia,
Louisiana whites made relentless war on the Republicans who could sustain
themselves only so long as they received armed support from Washington.
When that support was withdrawn by President Rutherford B. Hayes as
part of the Compromise of 1877, the last vestiges of the Radical government
vanished. What, if anything, did Reconstruction accomplish? Taylor con-
cludes that "Louisiana in I900oo was more like Louisiana in I86o than it
was like whatever dream Radical idealists had had. Like so many revo-
lutions, Reconstruction in Louisiana brought only ephemeral changes, and
when it was all over, things were much as they had been before" (p. 508).
Taylor has found evidence in surviving family papers that little attention
was paid to political developments in Louisiana; people were mainly con-
cerned with family and business affairs, and life went on much as usual.
It is one of the virtues of this admirable book that the author devotes
chapters to the general economy of Louisiana from 1865 to 1877; to labor,
the general merchant, and the crop-lien system (his account of sharecrop
and crop-lien arrangements is the best I have seen); and to social and
cultural developments during Reconstruction. A similar comprehensive
study of Reconstruction in Texas is badly needed.
The University of Texas at Austin NORMAN D. BROWN
A Historical Atlas of Texas. By William C. Pool. Maps by Edward Triggs
and Lance Wren. (Austin: Encino Press, 1975. Pp. v+190. Maps,
index. $15.)
We are told in the preface to this book that no previous historical atlas
of Texas has been published. After a thorough look at the Pool-Triggs-Wren
effort, I am convinced that we were better off with none. This atlas has
so many shortcomings, so many errors, so many omissions that I scarcely
know where to begin a criticism.
First, the map drawing is horrible. The format is an unattractive white

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976, periodical, 1975/1976; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101203/m1/398/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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