The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

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Robert S. Levine (The University of Maryland)

The Failed Promise

Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Robert S. Levine (The University of Maryland)

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English

WW Norton & Co
24 October 2022

History of the Americas; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Political structure & processes; Central government

When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the country was on the precipice of radical change. Johnson, seemingly more progressive than Lincoln, looked like the ideal person to lead the country. He had already cast himself as a ?

Moses? for the Black community, and African Americans were optimistic that he would pursue aggressive federal policies for Black equality.

Despite this early promise, Frederick Douglass, the country's most influential Black leader, soon grew disillusioned with Johnson's policies and increasingly doubted the president was sincere in supporting Black citizenship. In a dramatic and pivotal meeting between Johnson and a Black delegation at the White House, the president and Douglass came to verbal blows over the course of Reconstruction.

As he lectured across the country, Douglass continued to attack Johnson's policies, while raising questions about the Radical Republicans' hesitancy to grant African Americans the vote. Johnson meanwhile kept his eye on Douglass, eventually making a surprising effort to appoint him to a key position in his administration.

Levine grippingly portrays the conflicts that brought Douglass and the wider Black community to reject Johnson and call for a guilty verdict in his impeachment trial. He brings fresh insight by turning to letters between Douglass and his sons, speeches by Douglass and other major Black figures like Frances E. W. Harper, and articles and letters in the Christian Recorder, the most important African American newspaper of the time. In counterpointing the lives and careers of Douglass and Johnson, Levine offers a distinctive vision of the lost promise and dire failure of Reconstruction, the effects of which still reverberate today.

By: Robert S. Levine (The University of Maryland)
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 211mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 255g
ISBN: 9781324021797
ISBN 10: 1324021799
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 24 October 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Robert S. Levine (Ph.D. Stanford; General Editor and Editor, 1820–1865) is Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville; Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity; Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism; The Lives of Frederick Douglas; Race, Transnationalism, and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies; and (upcoming from Norton) The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He has edited a number of books, including The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville and Norton Critical Editions of Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables and Melville’s Pierre. Levine has received fellowships from the NEH and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2014 the American Literature Section of the MLA awarded him the Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies.

Reviews for The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

"""“...The Failed Promise is an important book for anyone on a quest to deeply understand the racism in America’s history."" -- DeNeen L. Brown - Washington Post"