Governor Chamberlain's Administration in South Carolina. By Walter Allen. (G.
P. Putnam's Sons.)—This interesting though too bulky volume belongs to that valuable class of literature out of which the American historian of the future will construct his account of how the Union almost literally pulled itself together after the Civil War. Its author describes his work as "a chapter of reconstruction in the United States," that reconstruction having been accomplished by a man to whom are sightly attributed " great force of character, a strong purpose, admirable courage, high culture, and a powerful eloquence." The very fact that Governor Chamberlain was ao fiercely assailed by orators and newspapers opposed to his policy as ever was a public man even in the United States, is a testimony to his being a man of genuine force. The State papers, the speeches, and the letters that are quoted from support this view of him. He governed South Carolina in the Republican interest at a period when it was a task of extreme difficulty to do, this. Ultimately he fell, because, as he put it in a letter to Mr. Lloyd Garrison, "the uneducated negro was too weak, no matter what his numbers, to cope with the whites." Five years later he also wrote, "Time is the all-healer. The negro is readmitted to work, and the white man to power. These, with honest administration and law taxes, will keep the peace, and time will heal the wounds and blot out even the scars of old strifes." Possibly it is so, but Governor Chamberlain and his trials, his victories, his defeat, his dubious treatment at the hands of his- tory, even his somewhat too decidedly Fourth-of-July oratory, merited such revival and explanation as they have obtained in Mr. Allen's large volume.
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