Book Reviews and Notices from Liverpool. The decision by Lord Russell to detain them, he says, was made some time before Adams laid his "this is war" message on Lord Russell's desk, September 5, 1863, and this dramatic act by Adams had nothing to do with the decision. Oddly, perhaps, Adams was more widely acclaimed in England when he left in 1868 than he was on his arrival in the United States. The rest of Adams's life was mostly postlude, and an increasingly tragic one, as Duberman points out. It included valuable services by him as arbitrator in the case of the Alabama claims, and several frustrating forays in politics. Though this volume is not too felicitously written, it is packed with interesting facts, including a 21-page bibliography and 86 pages of valuable notes, about a still somewhat enigmatic character. The facts given here, along with those referred to, might well be of interest to a psychoanalyst. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. By Eric L. McKitrick. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, i960, ix + 534 pages, biblio., index. $8.50.) Reviewed by Kenneth A. Bernard, Professor of History, Boston University. In this volume, written with clarity, insight, objectivity, and a keen appreciation of the complexities of history, Dr. McKitrick provides a counterbalance to the commonly accepted version of post-Civil War developments. His account (which concentrates on the period up to the Reconstruction Acts of 1867) stresses, through reassessment and interpretation, these essential points: 1. There was a continuing hope and expectation that postwar adjustment would be satisfactorily worked out by executive-legislative cooperation. Feelings were at first in balance. The back-to-normal, peace- and-friendship attitude was in evidence, and so, also, was the expectation that there would be justice and security. President Johnson's first moves —his proclamations and his early pardon policy—were generally approved. The Northern mind was open, and Republicans believed the President's policies to be Republican, experimental, and generous. Hope and expectation withstood numerous shocks from the South and from the White House. Nevertheless, when Congress met (December 1865) there was concern not only that it should have some voice, but also that there should be no break with the President. Even after Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill (February 1866), there was still room for compromise and hope that he would approve the Civil Rights Act. His opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment did not, to some, indicate a complete break, and after the decisive election returns in November the 422