Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Revisionists and Beardians, 1930s–1940s===
In the 1930s, [[historical revisionism]] became popular among scholars. As disciples of [[Charles A. Beard]], revisionists focused on economics, downplaying politics and constitutional issues. The central figure was a young scholar at the University of Wisconsin, [[Howard K. Beale]], who in his PhD dissertation, finished in 1924, developed a complex new interpretation of Reconstruction. The Dunning School portrayed freedmen as mere pawns in the hands of northern whites. Beale argued that the whites themselves were pawns in the hands of Northern industrialists, who had taken control of the nation during the Civil War and who Beale felt would be threatened by return to power of the Southern Whites. Beale further argued that the rhetoric of civil rights for Blacks, and the dream of equality, was rhetoric designed to fool idealistic voters, calling it "claptrap", arguing: "Constitutional discussions of the rights of the Negro, the status of Southern states, the legal position of ex-rebels, and the powers of Congress and the president determined nothing. They were pure sham."<ref>{{cite book |last=Beale |first=Howard K. |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalyearstud0000beal/page/n5/mode/2up |title=The Critical Year; A study of Andrew Johnson and reconstruction |publisher=F. Ungar |year=1958 |place=New York |page=147 |oclc=458675179 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Hugh |last=Tulloch |title=The Debate on the American Civil War Era |year=1999 |publisher=Manchester University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AVD1-qcknywC&pg=PA226 |page=226 |isbn=978-0-7190-4938-5}}</ref> The Beard–Beale interpretation of Reconstruction became known as "revisionism", and replaced the Dunning School for most historians until the 1950s, after which it was largely discredited.<ref>{{cite book |last=Charles |first=Allan D. |title=Twentieth-century American Historians |date=1983 |publisher=Gale Research |isbn=9780810311442 |editor-last=Wilson |editor-first=Clyde N. |location=Detroit |pages=32–38 |chapter=Howard K Beale}}</ref>{{sfnp|Williams|1946}}{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}

The Beardian interpretation of the causes of the Civil War downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. It ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. As the Beards explained in ''The Rise of American Civilization'' (1927), the Civil War was really a:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beard |first1=Charles A. |url=https://archive.org/details/riseofamericanci02bear |title=The Rise of American Civilization |last2=Beard |first2=Mary R. |publisher=Macmillan |year=1927 |volume=2 |place=New York |page=54 |name-list-style=amp |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South.}}

The Beards were especially interested in the Reconstruction era, as the industrialists of the Northeast and the farmers of the West cashed in on their great victory over the Southern aristocracy. Historian [[Richard Hofstadter]] paraphrases the Beards as arguing that in victory:<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Hofstadter |title=Progressive Historians |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=iLdMzbv2IDQC&pg=PT458 |orig-year=1968 |date=2012 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |page=303 |isbn=978-0-307-80960-5}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=the Northern capitalists were able to impose their economic program, quickly passing a series of measures on tariffs, banking, homesteads, and immigration that guaranteed the success of their plans for economic development. Solicitude for the freedmen had little to do with Northern policies. The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the Negro his citizenship, Beard found significant primarily as a result of a conspiracy of a few legislative draftsmen friendly to corporations to use the supposed elevation of the blacks as a cover for a fundamental law giving strong protection to business corporations against regulation by state government.}}

[[William B. Hesseltine]], a [[socialist]] politician and historian, adhered to the point that there were Northeastern businessmen wanting to control the Southern economy before and after the war, implying that they did by owning railroads.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |date=1935 |title=Economic Factors in the Abandonment of Reconstruction |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=191–210 |doi=10.2307/1898466 |jstor=1898466}}</ref> In his book, ''A History of The South 1607-1936'', he wrote "when the war closed, Northern business men looked to the South as a colony into which business might expand". Further in the same book, he wrote: "Moderates, Liberals, and Democrats continued to deplore Southern conditions until the Northern business man was persuaded that only a restoration of native white government would bring the peace necessary for economic penetration into the South."<ref name="Hesseltine1936">{{cite book |last1=Hesseltine |first1=William B. |title=A History Of The South 1607 1936 |date=1936 |pages=578, 640 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.153241/page/n597/mode/2up?view=theater}}</ref>

The Beard–Beale interpretation of the monolithic Northern industrialists fell apart in the 1950s when it was closely examined by numerous historians, including Robert P. Sharkey, Irwin Unger, and Stanley Coben.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Coben |first=Stanley |date=1959 |title=Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-examination |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=67–90 |doi=10.2307/1892388 |jstor=1892388}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Pressly |first=Thomas J. |date=1961 |title=''Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction'' (review) |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=7 |pages=91–92 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1961.0063 |s2cid=144355361}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |jstor=20089450 |title=Radical Republicanism in Pennsylvania, 1866–1873 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=85 |issue=4 |pages=439–457 |last=Montgomery |first=David |date=1961}}</ref> The younger scholars conclusively demonstrated that there was no unified economic policy on the part of the dominant Republican Party. Some wanted high tariffs and some low. Some wanted greenbacks and others wanted gold. There was no conspiracy to use Reconstruction to impose any such unified economic policy on the nation. Northern businessmen were widely divergent on monetary or tariff policy, and seldom paid attention to Reconstruction issues. Furthermore, the rhetoric on behalf of the rights of the freedmen was not claptrap but deeply-held and very serious political philosophy.{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfn|Foner|1983|pp=39-40}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}