DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Failed Promise

Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Robert S Levine author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:WW Norton & Co

Published:24th Sep '21

Should be back in stock very soon

This hardback is available in another edition too:

The Failed Promise cover

When Andrew Johnson rose to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, African Americans were optimistic that Johnson would pursue aggressive federal policies for Black equality. Just a year earlier, Johnson had cast himself as a “Moses” for the Black community. Frederick Douglass, the country’s most influential Black leader, increasingly doubted the president was sincere in supporting Black citizenship. In a dramatic meeting between Johnson and a Black delegation at the White House, the president and Douglass came to verbal blows over the fate of Reconstruction. Their animosity only grew as Johnson sought to undermine Reconstruction and conciliate leaders of the former Confederate states. Robert S. Levine grippingly recounts the conflicts that led to Johnson’s impeachment from the perspective of Douglass and the wider Black community. In counterpointing the lives and careers of Douglass and Johnson, Levine offers a fresh vision of the lost promise and dire failure of Reconstruction.

"In this engrossing new book, Robert S. Levine has penned a nuanced and detailed study of the ‘hopes and frustrations of Reconstruction’ during Andrew Johnson’s presidency. While focusing on the relationship between Johnson and Frederick Douglass, the author also includes the views of numerous African American writers who witnessed Johnson’s transformation from self-styled ‘Moses to Black People’ to betrayer of Reconstruction. The Failed Promise is a lesson for our times as we continue to confront our nation’s unfulfilled promise of racial equality." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"An engrossing account... Levine poignantly captures a moment when the future of the United States was up for grab... In so doing, the author suggests the tragic consequences of failure and the way in which those consequences are still very much with us." -- Randall Fuller - The Wall Street Journal

ISBN: 9781324004752

Dimensions: 239mm x 163mm x 28mm

Weight: 582g

336 pages