Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Experiment by
After victorious federal troops swept through southern Louisiana in 1862, the state became the testing ground for Abraham Lincoln's approach to reconstruction, and thus the focal point for the debate over post-war policy in Washington. Peyton McCrary offers a comprehensive account of the social and political upheavals in Louisiana, set against the background of a new interpretation of the revolutionary dimensions of the Civil War party system. He compares the moderate Republican regime set up by Lincoln with the antebellum social and political system, and contrasts it with the reactionary government established in 1865 under the aegis of Andrew Johnson and the Democratic Party. The author also explores the social history of the contract labor system, the evolution of the Freedmen's Bureau, and the growing participation of blacks in the Louisiana Republican movement. Drawing on extensive research in unpublished manuscripts, party records, and newspapers, and using sophisticated quantitative analysis of electoral and legislative behavior, Professor McCrary suggests a significant revision of earlier interpretations of Lincoln's reconstruction policies. He finds that the real architect of the gradualist approach with which the President was publicly identified was his commanding general in Louisiana, Nathaniel P. Banks, who was less open to the idea of Negro suffrage than was Lincoln himself. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South by
Moves beyond broad generalizations concerning black life during Reconstruction in order to address the varied experiences of freed slaves across the South. This collection examines urban unrest in New Orleans and Wilmington, North Carolina, loyalty among former slave owners and slaves in Mississippi, armed insurrection along the Georgia coast, racial violence throughout the region, and much more in order to provide a well-rounded portrait of the era.
Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia by
Long before the Montgomery bus boycott ushered in the modern civil rights movement, black and white southerners struggled to forge interracial democracy in America. This innovative book examines the most successful interracial coalition in the nineteenth-century South, Virginia's Readjuster Party, and uncovers a surprising degree of fluidity in postemancipation southern politics. Melding social, cultural, and political history, Jane Dailey chronicles the Readjusters' efforts to foster political cooperation across the color line. She demonstrates that the power of racial rhetoric, and the divisiveness of racial politics, derived from the everyday experiences of individual Virginians--from their local encounters on the sidewalk, before the magistrate's bench, in the schoolroom. In the process, she reveals the power of black and white southerners to both create and resist new systems of racial discrimination. The story of the Readjusters shows how hard white southerners had to work to establish racial domination after emancipation, and how passionately black southerners fought each and every infringement of their rights as Americans.
Beyond Redemption: Texas Democrats after Reconstruction by
At the end of Reconstruction, the old order reasserted itself, to varying degrees, throughout the former Confederate states. This period--Redemption, as it was called--was crucial in establishing the structures and alliances that dominated the Solid South until at least the mid-twentieth century. Texas shared in this, but because of its distinctive antebellum history, its western position within the region, and the large influx of new residents that poured across its borders, it followed its own path toward Redemption. Now, historian Patrick G. Williams provides a dual study of the issues facing Texas Democrats as they rebuilt their party and of the policies they pursued once they were back in power. Treating Texas as a southern but also a western and a borderlands state, Williams has crafted a work with a richly textured awareness unlike any previous single study. Students of regional and political history will benefit from Williams' comprehensive view of this often overlooked, yet definitive era in Texas history.
Black Legislators in Louisiana During Reconstruction by
When originally published, Charles Vincent's scholarship shed new light on the achievements of black legislators in the state legislatures in post-Civil War Louisiana-a state where black people were a majority in the state population but a minority in the legislature. Now updated with a new preface, this volume endures as an important work that illustrates the strength of minorities in state government during Reconstruction. It focuses on the achievements of the black representatives and senators in the Louisiana legislature who, through tireless fighting, were able to push forward many progressive reforms, such as universal public education, and social programs for the less fortunate. "Charles Vincent's book is a classic in the field of African American history-one of the ground-breaking works that helped pave the way for the scholarship that would follow." -John C. Rodrigue, author of Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880 "Charles Vincent is a widely respected historian whose book remains an important revisionist look at the ways that blacks were not simply pawns or victims during Reconstruction, but shaped the terms of emancipation and the agendas of governments in the post-Civil War South." -Scott P. Marler, University of Memphis
The Civil War and Reconstruction: An Eyewitness History by
The latest title in the ""Eyewitness to History"" series covers a dramatic period of 19th-century American history. It begins with early historical developments that led to the Civil War, and it concludes with the Reconstruction period from 1865 to 1868. Rather than marshalling the historical facts of the period, this volume presents a mosaic of eyewitness accounts, the words of actual participants and first-hand observations through which readers can relive events. Each chapter starts with a brief historical context, which is followed by a chronology of events and carefully selected quotations emphasizing the diversity of viewpoints at the time. The appendix incorporates a useful list of documents, including Lincoln's inaugural address and the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Civil War Era and Reconstruction by
The encyclopedia takes a broad, multidisciplinary approach to the history of the period. It includes general and specific entries on politics and business, labor, industry, agriculture, education and youth, law and legislative affairs, literature, music, the performing and visual arts, health and medicine, science and technology, exploration, life on the Western frontier, family life, slave life, Native American life, women, and more than a hundred influential individuals.
The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction by
On Easter Sunday, 1873, in the tiny hamlet of Colfax, Louisiana, more than 150 members of an all-black Republican militia, defending the town's courthouse, were slain by an armed force of rampaging white supremacists. The most deadly incident of racial violence of the Reconstruction era, the Colfax Massacre unleashed a reign of terror that all but extinguished the campaign for racial equality.LeeAnna Keith's The Colfax Massacre is the first full-length book to tell the history of this decisive event. Drawing on a huge body of documents, including eyewitness accounts of the massacre, as well as newly discovered evidence from the site itself, Keith explores the racial tensions that led to the fateful encounter, during which surrendering blacks were mercilessly slaughtered, and the reverberations this message of terror sent throughout the South. Keith also recounts the heroic attempts by U.S. Attorney J.R. Beckwith to bring the killers to justice and the many legal issues raised by the massacre. In 1875, disregarding the poignant testimony of 300 witnesses, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in U.S. v. Cruikshank to overturn a lower court conviction of eight conspirators. This decision virtually nullified the Ku Klux Klan Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871--which had made federal offenses of a variety of acts to intimidate voters and officeholders--and cleared the way for the Jim Crow era.If there was a single historical moment that effectively killed Reconstruction and erased the gains blacks had made since the civil war, it was the day of the Colfax Massacre. LeeAnna Keith gives readers both a gripping narrative account of that portentous day and a nuanced historical analysis of its far-reaching repercussions.
A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents, 1865-1881 by
A Companion to Reconstruction Presidents presents a series of original essays that explore a variety of important issues, themes, and debates associated with the presidencies of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes. Represents the first comprehensive look at the presidencies of Johnson, Grant, and Hayes in one volume Features contributions from top historians and presidential scholars Approaches the study of these presidents from a historiographical perspective Key topics include each president's political career; foreign policy; domestic policy; military history; and social context of their terms in office
Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments by
At stage center of the American drama, maintains David A. J. Richards, is the attempt to understand the implications of the Reconstruction Amendments--Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen to the United States Constitution. Richards evaluates previous efforts to interpret the amendments and then proposes his own view: together the amendments embodied a self-conscious rebirth of America's revolutionary, rights-based constitutionalism. Building on an approach to constitutional law developed in his Toleration and the Constitution and Foundations of American Constitutionalism, Richards links history, law, and political theory. In Conscience and the Constitution, this method leads from an analysis of the Reconstruction Amendments to a broad discussion of the American constitutional system as a whole. Richards's interpretation focuses on the abolitionists and their radical commitment to the "dissenting conscience." In his view, the Reconstruction Amendments expressed not only the constitutional arguments of a particular historical period but also a general political theory developed by the abolitionists, who restructured the American political community in terms of respect for universal human rights. He argues further that the amendments make a claim on our generation to keep faith with the vision of the "founders of 1865." In specific terms he points out what such allegiance would mean in the context of present-day constitutional issues. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction by
Reconstruction policy after the Civil War, observes Mark Wahlgren Summers, was shaped not simply by politics, principles, and prejudices. Also at work were fears--often unreasonable fears of renewed civil war and a widespread sense that four years of war had thrown the normal constitutional process so dangerously out of kilter that the republic itself remained in peril. To understand Reconstruction, Summers contends, one must understand that the purpose of the North's war was--first and foremost--to save the Union with its republican institutions intact. During Reconstruction there were always fears in the mix--that the Civil War had settled nothing, that the Union was still in peril, and that its enemies and the enemies of republican government were more resilient and cunning than normal mortals. Many factors shaped the reintegration of the former Confederate states and the North's commitment to Reconstruction, Summers agrees, but the fears of war reigniting, plots against liberty, and a president prepared to father a coup d'etat ranked higher among them than historians have recognized. Both a dramatic narrative of the events of Reconstruction and a groundbreaking new look at what drove these events, A Dangerous Stir is also a valuable look at the role of fear in the politics of the time--and in politics in general.
The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 by
Historians overwhelmingly have blamed the demise of Reconstruction on Southerners' persistent racism. Richardson argues instead that class, along with race, was critical to Reconstruction's end. She reveals a growing backlash from Northerners against those who believed that inequalities should be addressed through working-class action, and the emergence of an American middle class that championed individual productivity and saw African-Americans as a threat to their prosperity.
Declarations of Dependence by
In this highly original study, Gregory Downs argues that the most American of wars, the Civil War, created a seemingly Un-American popular politics, rooted not in independence but in voluntary claims of dependence. Through an examination of the pleas and petitions of ordinary North Carolinians, Declarations of Dependence contends that the Civil War redirected, not destroyed, claims of dependence by exposing North Carolinians to the expansive but unsystematic power of Union and Confederate governments, and by loosening the legal ties that bound them to husbands, fathers, and masters. Faced with anarchy during the long reconstruction of government authority, people turned fervently to the government for protection and sustenance, pleading in fantastic, intimate ways for attention. This personalistic, or what Downs calls patronal, politics allowed for appeals from subordinate groups like freed blacks and poor whites, and also bound people emotionally to newly expanding postwar states. Downs's argument rewrites the history of the relationship between Americans and their governments, showing the deep roots of dependence, the complex impact of the Civil War upon popular politics, and the powerful role of Progressivism and segregation in submerging a politics of dependence that--in new form--rose again in the New Deal and persists today.
Dubious Victory: The Reconstruction Debate in Ohio by
"To the victors belong the spoils" is a time-honored cliche. When in 1865 northern armies defeated the greatest challenge ever posed to the Union, issues of spoils and peace terms dominated public debate. But precisely what did the victorious North want from the Reconstruction process? Historians generally have shown far less interest in northern goals than in what terms southerners were willing to accept. Robert Sawrey now seeks to redress the balance by examining the post-Civil War attitudes of a representative northern state, Ohio. Sawrey's probing study explores precisely what the key issues were for politically active Ohioans and what they sought in a Reconstruction policy. Through extensive research in contemporary newspapers, manuscripts, legislative debates, and diaries, he offers the most complete picture ever presented of northern attitudes on the two crucial issues of Reconstruction -- the terms of readmission and the fate of the former slaves. Ohioans' struggle to find an equation for restoring a Union that now included nearly four million free blacks was complicated, he finds, by their prejudices and their belief in white superiority. Because they regarded the "planter conspiracy" as a primary cause of the war, they sought to assure future peace through control of the planters -- a position that compelled them to advocate basic rights for ex-slaves. At the same time, they continued to support white supremacy throughout the nation. To reconcile these contradictory positions was a daunt-ing task. Yet by 1870, Sawrey finds, most politically involved Ohioans believed Reconstruction had secured their basic goals. Dubious Victory offers a fresh approach to understanding the limits of what was achievable during Reconstruction. It also explains why the achievements of the period now seem to have been so limited.
Emancipation's Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest by
Most studies of emancipation's consequences have focused on the South. Moving the discussion to the North, Leslie Schwalm enriches our understanding of the national impact of the transition from slavery to freedom. Emancipation's Diaspora follows the lives and experiences of thousands of men and women who liberated themselves from slavery, made their way to overwhelmingly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and worked to live in dignity as free women and men and as citizens. Schwalm explores the hotly contested politics of black enfranchisement as well as collisions over segregation, civil rights, and the more informal politics of race--including how slavery and emancipation would be remembered and commemorated. She examines how gender shaped the politics of race, and how gender relations were contested and negotiated within the black community. Based on extensive archival research, Emancipation's Diaspora shows how in churches and schools, in voting booths and Masonic temples, in bustling cities and rural crossroads, black and white Midwesterners--women and men--shaped the local and national consequences of emancipation.
The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation by
For 4 million slaves, emancipation was a liberation and resurrection story of biblical proportion, both the clearest example of God's intervention in human history and a sign of the end of days. In this book, Matthew Harper demonstrates how black southerners' theology, in particular their understanding of the end times, influenced nearly every major economic and political decision they made in the aftermath of emancipation. From considering what demands to make in early Reconstruction to deciding whether or not to migrate west, African American Protestants consistently inserted themselves into biblical narratives as a way of seeing the importance of their own struggle in God's greater plan for humanity. Phrases like "jubilee," "Zion," "valley of dry bones," and the "New Jerusalem" in black-authored political documents invoked different stories from the Bible to argue for different political strategies. This study offers new ways of understanding the intersections between black political and religious thought of this era. Until now, scholarship on black religion has not highlighted how pervasive or contested these beliefs were. This narrative, however, tracks how these ideas governed particular political moments as African Americans sought to define and defend their freedom in the forty years following emancipation.
Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction by
The Civil War is the greatest trauma ever experienced by the American nation, a four-year paroxysm of violence that left in its wake more than 600,000 dead, more than 2 million refugees, and the destruction (in modern dollars) of more than $700 billion in property. The war also sparked some ofthe most heroic moments in American history and enshrined a galaxy of American heroes. Above all, it permanently ended the practice of slavery and proved, in an age of resurgent monarchies, that a liberal democracy could survive the most frightful of challenges.In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. And unlike other surveys of the CivilWar era, it extends the reader's vista to include the postwar Reconstruction period and discusses the modern-day legacy of the Civil War in American literature and popular culture. Guelzo also puts the conflict in a global perspective, underscoring Americans' acute sense of the vulnerability oftheir republic in a world of monarchies. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and especially the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals,North and South.Written by a leading authority on our nation's most searing crisis, Fateful Lightning offers a vivid and original account of an event whose echoes continue with Americans to this day.
Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America by
The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this?Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history--a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure.
Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction by
Historians have long treated Reconstruction primarily as a southern concern isolated from broader national political developments. Yet at its core, Reconstruction was a battle for the legacy of the Civil War that would determine the political fate not only of the South but of the nation. In Gold and Freedom, Nicolas Barreyre recovers the story of how economic issues became central to American politics after the war. The idea that a financial debate was as important for Reconstruction as emancipation may seem remarkable, but the war created economic issues that all Americans, not just southerners, had to grapple with, including a huge debt, an inconvertible paper currency, high taxation, and tariffs. Alongside the key issues of race and citizenship, the struggle with the new economic model and the type of society it created pervaded the entire country. Both were legacies of war. Both were fought over by the same citizens in a newly reunited nation. It was thus impossible for such closely related debates to proceed independently. A truly groundbreaking work, Gold and Freedom shows how much the fate of Reconstruction--and the political world it ultimately created--owed to northern sectional divisions, revealing important links between race and economy, as well as region and nation, not previously recognized.
Henry Wilson and the ERA of Reconstruction by
Already a leader of the Republican party when the Civil War began, Henry Wilson had distinguished himself as the most important Congressional figure on military and antislavery and pro-black legislation during the war. During the Era of Reconstruction, Wilson fought to protect the rights of the newly-freed slaves, but he was opposed to the severe punishment of Confederate leaders and initially tried to be conciliatory toward President Johnson's lenient policies. Soon Wilson joined others in promoting Congress's own Reconstruction program, including the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Military Reconstruction Acts, and the impeachment of the President. He became the Republican Party's most frequently-used campaign speaker. Long recognized as a spokesman for labor, he was also the foremost national politician promoting the cause of prohibition. He wrote the most authoritative three-volume work on the causes of the Civil War from the northern viewpoint. He was also a frequent contributor to the era's most influential religious periodical. In 1872, Wilson was rewarded for his political activities when he was nominated and elected as the country's vice-president.
Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction by
The importance of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the history of the United States cannot be overstated. Many historians regard the Civil War as the defining event in American history. At stake was not only freedom for 3.5 million slaves but also survival of the relatively new American experiment in self-government. A very real possibility existed that the union could have been severed, but a collection of determined leaders and soldiers proved their willingness to fight for the survival of what Abraham Lincoln called "the last best hope on earth." The second edition of this highly readable, one-volume Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction looks to place the war in its historical context. The more than 800 entries, encompassing the years 1844-1877, cover the significant events, persons, politics, and economic and social themes of the Civil War and Reconstruction. An extensive chronology, introductory essay, and comprehensive bibliography supplement the cross-referenced dictionary entries to guide the reader through the military and non-military actions of one of the most pivotal events in American history. The dictionary concludes with a selection of primary documents. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Jackson County War: Reconstruction and Resistance in Post-civil War Florida by
The Jackson County War offers original conclusions explaining why Jackson County became the bloodiest region in Reconstruction Florida and is the first book-length treatment of the subject. From early 1869 through the end of 1871, citizens of Jackson County, Florida, slaughtered their neighbors by the score. The nearly threeyear frenzy of bloodshed became known as the Jackson County War. The killings, close to one hundred and by some estimates twice that number, brought Jackson County the notoriety of being the most violent county in Florida during the Reconstruction era. Daniel R. Weinfeld has made a thorough investigation of contemporary accounts. He adds an assessment of recently discovered information, and presents a critical evaluation of the standard secondary sources. The Jackson County War focuses on the role of the Freedmen's Bureau, the emergence of white "Regulators," and the development of African American political consciousness and leadership. It follows the community's descent after the Civil War into disorder punctuated by furious outbursts of violence until the county settled into uneasy stability seven years later. The Jackson County War emerges as an emblem of all that could and did go wrong in the uneasy years after Appomattox and that left a residue of hatred and fear that endured for generations.
Lincoln and Reconstruction by
Although Abraham Lincoln dominates the literature on the American Civil War, he remains less commonly associated with reconstruction. Previous scholarly works touch on Lincoln and reconstruction, but they tend either to speculate on what Lincoln might have done after the war had he not been assassinated or to approach his reconstruction plans merely as a means of winning the war. In this thought-provoking study, John C. Rodrigue offers a succinct but significant survey of Lincoln's wartime reconstruction initiatives while providing a fresh interpretation of the president's plans for postwar America. Revealing that Lincoln concerned himself with reconstruction from the earliest days of his presidency, Rodrigue details how Lincoln's initiatives unfolded, especially in the southern states where they were attempted. He explores Lincoln's approach to various issues relevant to reconstruction, including slavery, race, citizenship, and democracy; his dealings with Congressional Republicans, especially the Radicals; his support for and eventual abandonment of colonization; his dealings with the border states; his handling of the calls for negotiations with the Confederacy as a way of reconstructing the Union; and his move toward emancipation and its implications for his approach to reconstruction. As the Civil War progressed, Rodrigue shows, Lincoln's definition of reconstruction transformed from the mere restoration of the seceded states to a more fundamental social, economic, and political reordering of southern society and of the Union itself. Based on Lincoln's own words and writings as well as an extensive array of secondary literature, Rodrigue traces the evolution of Lincoln's thinking on reconstruction, providing new insight into a downplayed aspect of his presidency.
The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction by
For a generation, scholarship on the Reconstruction era has rightly focused on the struggles of the recently emancipated for a meaningful freedom and defined its success or failure largely in those terms. In The Ordeal of the Reunion, Mark Wahlgren Summers goes beyond this vitally important question, focusing on Reconstruction's need to form an enduring Union without sacrificing the framework of federalism and republican democracy. Assessing the era nationally, Summers emphasizes the variety of conservative strains that confined the scope of change, highlights the war's impact and its aftermath, and brings the West and foreign policy into an integrated narrative. In sum, this book offers a fresh explanation for Reconstruction's demise and a case for its essential successes as well as its great failures. Indeed, this book demonstrates the extent to which the victors' aims in 1865 were met--and at what cost. Summers depicts not just a heroic, tragic moment with equal rights advanced and then betrayed but a time of achievement and consolidation, in which nationhood and emancipation were placed beyond repeal and the groundwork was laid for a stronger, if not better, America to come.
Preserving the Constitution: Essays on Politics and the Constitution in the Reconstruction Era by
"Americans' ideas about constitutional liberty played a crucial role in the history of Reconstruction. They provided the basis for the Republican program of equal rights; ironically, they also set the limits to that program and reduced the prospects for its success. Americans were as concerned with preserving the Constitution as they were with changing it to protect liberty and equal rights. These two commitments were in profound tension. The question was how one could change the constitutional system to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence--to entrench a republic dedicated to liberty instead of slavery--and yet preserve the essentials of federalism and local democracy. Almost 150 years later we still struggle with these problems." --Michael Les Benedict, from the Introduction Historians and legal scholars continue to confront the failure of Reconstruction, exploring the interaction of pervasive racism with widespread commitments to freedom and equality. In this important book, one of America's leading historians confronts the constitutional politics of the period from the end of the Civil War until 1877. Benedict updates ten of his classic essays that explore the way Republicans tried to replace the slaveholding republic with a nation dedicated to freedom and equality of basic legal and political rights--and how Americans' constitutional commitments, and those of Republicans themselves, limited reform. Expertly bridging legal, political, party history, the essays explore the fate of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the struggle between President and Congress over the course of Reconstruction. Brought together for the first time with a new introduction, and revised to reflect emerging scholarship, the essays are essential points of departure for students and scholars in history, law, and political science.
Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 by
During the American Civil War and its aftermath, Southern evangelicals remained convinced that their cause was both Christian and just. This position became more entrenched as Northern evangelicals entered the South after the war, aiming to save freedmen. Author Daniel Stowell plots the conflict that resulted from these competing visions of the religious reconstruction of the South. By demonstrating how the Southern vision eventually came to predominate, he shows how the Southern Churches became one of the principal bulwarks in the creation of the myth of the "Lost Cause," Southern honour, and curious moral righteousness of the South's treatment of both slave and freedman.
Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War by
Former slaves, with no prior experience in electoral politics and with few economic resources or little significant social standing, created a sweeping political movement that transformed the South after the Civil War. Within a few short years after emancipation, not only were black men voting but they had elected thousands of ex-slaves to political offices. Historians have long noted the role of African American slaves in the fight for their emancipation and their many efforts to secure their freedom and citizenship, yet they have given surprisingly little attention to the system of governance that freedpeople helped to fashion. Justin Behrend argues that freedpeople created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy. Reconstructing Democracy tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people who lived in the Natchez District, a region of the Deep South where black political mobilization was very successful. Behrend shows how freedpeople set up a political system rooted in egalitarian values wherein local communities rather than powerful individuals held power and ordinary people exercised unprecedented influence in governance. In so doing, he invites us to reconsider not only our understanding of Reconstruction but also the nature and origins of democracy more broadly.
Reconstruction by
Few periods in American history have aroused as much debate as the years immediately after the Civil War, those commonly referred to simply as Reconstruction. The victorious North had to determine how to treat the vanquished South and how to make a nation whole once again. The divisive issues of freedom and civil rights became even more complex than before the War and dominated national politics. Also at stake was the balance of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Before it was all over, a president was impeached (though not convicted), and a rigorous plan for Reconstruction was enacted, then allowed to fade as white Southerners regained power and instituted repressive Jim Crow governments. This resource provides an overview essay on the period, six essays on various aspects of Reconstruction, a section of biographies of important players, and selected and introduced primary documents. What was Lincoln's view of the South and his plan for its postwar fate? How did Southern whites perceive their return to the Union? What motivated the Radical Republicans? Why did they impeach Johnson? What did the Reconstruction Amendments accomplish? How did former Confederates return to power, and so quickly? These questions and more are addressed in this handy reference source. It is the perfect starting place for student and general reader research and provides a well-rounded introduction to this critical period in American history.
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by
This "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) made history when it was originally published in 1988. It redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) has since gone on to become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period -- an era whose legacy reverberates still today in the United States.
Reconstruction: Interpreting American History by
Writing in 1935 in his brilliant and brooding Black Reconstruction, W. E. B. Du Bois lamented America's post-Civil War era as a missed opportunity to reconstruct the war-torn nation in deed as well as in word. "If the Reconstruction of the Southern states, from slavery to free labor, and from aristocracy to industrial democracy, had been conceived as a major national program of America, whose accomplishment at any price was well worth the effort," wrote Du Bois, "we should be living today in a different world." Interpreting American History: Reconstruction provides a primer on the often-contentious historical literature on Reconstruction, the period in American history from 1865 to 1877. As Du Bois noted, this critical period in U.S. history held much promise for African Americans transitioning from slavery to freedom and in redefining American nationality for all citizens. In topically arranged historiographical essays, eight historians focus on the changing interpretations of Reconstruction from the so-called Dunning School of the early twentieth century to the "revisionists" of the World War II era, the "postrevisionists" of the Vietnam era, and the most current "post-postrevisionists" writing on Reconstruction today. The essays treat the two main chronological periods of Reconstruction history, Presidential and Radical Reconstruction, and provide coverage of emancipation and race, national politics, intellectual life and historical memory, gender and labor, and Reconstruction's transnational history. Interpreting American History: Reconstruction is an essential guidebook for students and scholars traversing the formidable terrain of Reconstruction historiography.
Reconstruction: People and Perspectives by
This entry in the Perspectives in Social History series examines the course and consequences of Reconstruction on the former Confederate states by focusing on the everyday people who lived through it. * Primary documents provide first-hand insight into the lives and times of diverse individuals during one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history * Includes a bibliography of key works on the Reconstruction era as well as a reference chapter of terms, people, and events, including "carpetbaggers," "Gideon's band," and "the Colfax massacre"
Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) by
Defining Documents in American History: The Reconstruction Era offers in-depth critical analysis of 20 primary source documents. Articles begin by introducing readers to the document's historical context, followed by a description of the author's life and circumstances in which the document was written. A document analysis, written by professional writers and historians, guides readers in understanding key elements of language, rhetoric, and social and political meaning that define the significance of the author and document in American history.
The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877 by
As the sole purveyors of news and opinion, Reconstruction-era newspapers bent and spindled American public opinion with little regard for independent journalism and great regard for party politics. In other words, the newspapers of the Reconstruction era served political rather than social needs. The issues facing the nation were momentous, and opinions on how to deal with the problems were vigorously presented and defended. Using editorials, letters, essays, and news reports that appeared throughout the country's print media, this book reveals how editors, politicians, and other Americans used the press to influence opinion from 1865 to 1877. Issues such as civil rights, constitutional amendments, a presidential impeachment, Indian wars, immigration, and political corruption dominated the newspapers and gave journalists opportunities to advance their agendas. Each of the 30 chapters of this book introduces an event or issue and includes news articles representing opposing sides of the issue as it affected Americans. Readers can use the introductory essays and primary source documents to understand how newspapers and magazines presented vital events and issues to Americans of the day. This invaluable reference source presents hard-to-find opinions in the words of those who wrote them.
The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 by
Tracing the transformation of liberal political ideology from the end of the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Nancy Cohen offers a new interpretation of the origins and character of modern liberalism. She argues that the values and programs associated with modern liberalism were formulated not during the Progressive Era, as most accounts maintain, but earlier, in the very different social context of the Gilded Age. Integrating intellectual, social, cultural, and economic history, Cohen argues that the reconstruction of liberalism hinged on the reaction of postbellum liberals to social and labor unrest. As new social movements of workers and farmers arose and phrased their protests in the rhetoric of democratic producerism, liberals retreated from earlier commitments to an expansive vision of democracy. Redefining liberal ideas about citizenship and the state, says Cohen, they played a critical role in legitimating emergent corporate capitalism and politically insulating it from democratic challenge. As the social cost of economic globalization comes under international critical scrutiny, this book revisits the bitter struggles over the relationship between capitalism and democracy in post-Civil War America. The resolution of this problem offered by the new liberalism deeply influenced the progressives and has left an enduring legacy for twentieth-century American politics, Cohen argues.
The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction by
After the Civil War's end, reports surged of violence by Southern whites against Union troops and Black men, women, and children. While some in Washington, D.C., sought to downplay the growing evidence of atrocities, in September 1866, Freedmen's Bureau commissioner O. O. Howard requested that assistant commissioners in the readmitted states compile reports of "murders and outrages" to catalog the extent of violence, to prove that the reports of a peaceful South were wrong, and to argue in Congress for the necessity of martial law. What ensued was one of the most fascinating and least understood fights of the Reconstruction era--a political and analytical fight over information and its validity, with implications that dealt in life and death. Here William A. Blair takes the full measure of the bureau's attempt to document and deploy hard information about the reality of the violence that Black communities endured in the wake of Emancipation. Blair uses the accounts of far-flung Freedmen's Bureau agents to ask questions about the early days of Reconstruction, which are surprisingly resonant with the present day: How do you prove something happened in a highly partisan atmosphere where the credibility of information is constantly challenged? And what form should that information take to be considered as fact?
Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction by
American constitutional lawyers and legal historians routinely assert that the Supreme Court's state action doctrine halted Reconstruction in its tracks. But it didn't. Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction demolishes the conventional wisdom - and puts a constructive alternative in its place. Pamela Brandwein unveils a lost jurisprudence of rights that provided expansive possibilities for protecting blacks' physical safety and electoral participation, even as it left public accommodation rights undefended. She shows that the Supreme Court supported a Republican coalition and left open ample room for executive and legislative action. Blacks were abandoned, but by the president and Congress, not the Court. Brandwein unites close legal reading of judicial opinions (some hitherto unknown), sustained historical work, the study of political institutions, and the sociology of knowledge. This book explodes tired old debates and will provoke new ones.
Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction by
Between the era of America's landmark antebellum compromises and that of the Compromise of 1877, a war had intervened, destroying the integrity of the Southern system but failing to determine the New South's relation to the Union. While it did not restore the old order in the South, or restore the South to parity with the Union, it did lay down the political foundations for reunion, bring Reconstruction to an end, and shape the future of four million freedmen. Originally published in 1951, this classic work by one of America's foremost experts on Southern history presents an important new interpretation of the Compromise, forcing historians to revise previous attitudes towards the Reconstruction period, the history of the Republican party, and the realignment of forces that fought the Civil War. Because much of the negotiating occurred in secrecy, historians have known less about this Compromise than others before it. Now reissued with a new introduction by Woodward, Reunion and Reaction gives us the other half of the story.
Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861-1876 by
Conventional wisdom holds that freedmen's education was largely the work of privileged, single white northern women motivated by evangelical beliefs and abolitionism. Backed by pathbreaking research, Ronald E. Butchart's Schooling the Freed People shatters this notion. The most comprehensive quantitative study of the origins of black education in freedom ever undertaken, this definitive book on freedmen's teachers in the South is an outstanding contribution to social history and our understanding of African American education.
Searching for Freedom after the Civil War by
Winner of the Gulf South Historical Association's Michael Thomas Book Award. In Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman, G. Ward Hubbs uses a stark and iconic political cartoon to illuminate postwar conflicts over the meaning of freedom in the American South. The cartoon first appeared in the Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor, published by local Ku Klux Klan boss Ryland Randolph, as a swaggering threat aimed at three individuals. Hanged from an oak branch clutching a carpetbag marked "OHIO" is the Reverend Arad S. Lakin, the Northern-born incoming president of the University of Alabama. Swinging from another noose is Dr. Noah B. Cloud--agricultural reformer, superintendent of education, and deemed by Randolph a "scalawag" for joining Alabama's reformed state government. The accompanying caption, penned in purple prose, similarly threatens Shandy Jones, a politically active local man of color. Using a dynamic and unprecedented approach that interprets the same events through four points of view, Hubbs artfully unpacks numerous layers of meaning behind this brutal two-dimensional image. The four men associated with the cartoon--Randolph, Lakin, Cloud, and Jones--were archetypes of those who were seeking to rebuild a South shattered by war. Hubbs explores these broad archetypes but also delves deeply into the four men's life stories, writings, speeches, and decisions in order to recreate each one's complex worldview and quest to live freely. Their lives, but especially their four very different understandings of freedom, help to explain many of the conflicts of the 1860s. The result is an intellectual tour de force. General readers of this highly accessible volume will discover fascinating new insights about life during and after America's greatest crisis, as will scholars of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and southern history.
A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 by
Historians often assert that Confederate nationalism had its origins in pre-Civil War sectional conflict with the North, reached its apex at the start of the war, and then dropped off quickly after the end of hostilities. Anne Sarah Rubin argues instead that white Southerners did not actually begin to formulate a national identity until it became evident that the Confederacy was destined to fight a lengthy war against the Union. She also demonstrates that an attachment to a symbolic or sentimental Confederacy existed independent of the political Confederacy and was therefore able to persist well after the collapse of the Confederate state. White Southerners redefined symbols and figures of the failed state as emotional touchstones and political rallying points in the struggle to retain local (and racial) control, even as former Confederates took the loyalty oath and applied for pardons in droves. Exploring the creation, maintenance, and transformation of Confederate identity during the tumultuous years of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Rubin sheds new light on the ways in which Confederates felt connected to their national creation and provides a provocative example of what happens when a nation disintegrates and leaves its people behind to forge a new identity.
Slavery, Resistance, Freedom by
Americans have always defined themselves in terms of their freedoms--of speech, of religion, of political dissent. How we interpret our history of slavery--the ultimate denial of these freedoms--deeply affects how we understand the very fabric of our democracy.This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America's top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged--indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office.Wide-ranging, authoritative, and filled with invaluable historical insight, Slavery, Resistance, Freedom brings a host of powerful voices to America's evolving conversation about race.
The South As It Is: 1865-1866 by
This classic report originally appeared as a series of articles in the Nation between July 8, 1865, and April 11, 1866. Dennett traveled in seven states--Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi--at the very beginning of Reconstruction. His remarkably prophetic account of the recently defeated South is a major source for the history of this transition.
Stories of the South: Race and the Reconstruction of Southern Identity, 1865-1915 by
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the character of the South, and even its persistence as a distinct region, was an open question. During Reconstruction, the North assumed significant power to redefine the South, imagining a region rebuilt and modeled on northern society. The white South actively resisted these efforts, battling the legal strictures of Reconstruction on the ground. Meanwhile, white southern storytellers worked to recast the South's image, romanticizing the Lost Cause and heralding the birth of a New South. In Stories of the South, K. Stephen Prince argues that this cultural production was as important as political competition and economic striving in turning the South and the nation away from the egalitarian promises of Reconstruction and toward Jim Crow. Examining novels, minstrel songs, travel brochures, illustrations, oratory, and other cultural artifacts produced in the half century following the Civil War, Prince demonstrates the centrality of popular culture to the reconstruction of southern identity, shedding new light on the complicity of the North in the retreat from the possibility of racial democracy.
Texas Confederate, Reconstruction Governor: James Webb Throckmorton by 
Washington During Civil War and Reconstruction by 
We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice: Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877 by
The sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Reconstruction invites reflection on the broad meaning of American democracy, including the ideals of freedom, equality, racial justice, and self-determination. In We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice, John David Smith brings together a wealth of primary texts--editorials, letters, newspaper articles, and personal testimonies--to illuminate the experience of emancipation for the millions of African Americans enmeshed in the transition from chattel slavery to freedom from 1865 to 1877. The years following Appomattox offered the freed people numerous opportunities and challenges. Ex-slaves reconnected with relatives dispersed by the domestic slave trade and the vicissitudes of civil war. They sought their own farms and homesteads, education for their children, and legal protection from whites hostile to their new status. They negotiated labor contracts, established local communities, and, following the 1867 Reconstruction Acts, entered local, state, and national politics. Though aided by Freedmen's Bureau agents and sympathetic whites, former slaves nevertheless faced daunting odds. Ku Klux Klansmen and others terrorized blacks who asserted themselves, many northerners lost interest in their plight, and federal officials gradually left them to their own resources. As a result, former Confederates regained control of the southern state governments following the 1876 presidential election. We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice is a substantially revised and expanded edition of a book originally published under the title Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877.
West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War by
"This thoughtful, engaging examination of the Reconstruction Era will be appealing to anyone interested in the roots of present-day American politics" (Publishers Weekly). The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. In many ways, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners forged a national identity that united three very different regions into a country that could become a world power. A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book tracks the formation of the American middle class while stretching the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the North and West into the post-Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South. By weaving together the experiences of real individuals who left records in their own words--from ordinary Americans such as a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, and a labor organizer, to prominent historical figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull--Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.
We Will Be Satisfied with Nothing Less: The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North during Reconstruction by
Historians have focused almost entirely on the attempt by southern African Americans to attain equal rights during Reconstruction. However, the northern states also witnessed a significant period of struggle during these years. Northern blacks vigorously protested laws establishing inequality in education, public accommodations, and political life and challenged the Republican Party to live up to its stated ideals. In "We Will Be Satisfied With Nothing Less," Hugh Davis concentrates on the two issues that African Americans in the North considered most essential: black male suffrage rights and equal access to the public schools. Davis connects the local and the national; he joins the specifics of campaigns in places such as Cincinnati, Detroit, and San Francisco with the work of the National Equal Rights League and its successor, the National Executive Committee of Colored Persons. The narrative moves forward from their launching of the equal rights movement in 1864 to the "end" of Reconstruction in the North two decades later. The struggle to gain male suffrage rights was the centerpiece of the movement's agenda in the 1860s, while the school issue remained a major objective throughout the period. Following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, northern blacks devoted considerable attention to assessing their place within the Republican Party and determining how they could most effectively employ the franchise to protect the rights of all citizens.
Witness to Reconstruction: Constance Fenimore Woolson and the Postbellum South, 1873-1894 by
In the wake of the Civil War, Constance Fenimore Woolson became one of the first northern observers to linger in the defeated states from Virginia to Florida. Born in New Hampshire in 1840 and raised in Ohio, she was the grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper and was gaining success as a writer when she departed in 1873 for St. Augustine. During the next six years, she made her way across the South and reported what she saw, first in illustrated travel accounts and then in the poetry, stories, and serialized novels that brought unsettled social relations to the pages of Harper's Monthly, the Atlantic, Scribner's Monthly, Appletons' Journal, and the Galaxy. In the midst of Reconstruction and in print for years to come, Woolson revealed the sharp edges of loss, the sharper summons of opportunity, and the entanglements of northern misperceptions a decade before the waves of well-heeled tourists arrived during the 1880s. This volume's sixteen essays are intent on illuminating, through her example, the neglected world of Reconstruction's backwaters in literary developments that were politically charged and genuinely unpredictable. Drawing upon the postcolonial and transnational perspectives of New Southern Studies, as well as the cultural history, intellectual genealogy, and feminist priorities that lend urgency to the portraits of the global South, this collection investigates the mysterious, ravaged territory of a defeated nation as curious northern readers first saw it.
Writing Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the Postwar South by
After the Civil War, the South was divided into five military districts occupied by Union forces. Out of these regions, a remarkable group of writers emerged. Experiencing the long-lasting ramifications of Reconstruction firsthand, many of these writers sought to translate the era's promise into practice. In fiction, newspaper journalism, and other forms of literature, authors including George Washington Cable, Albion Tourgee, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Octave Thanet imagined a new South in which freedpeople could prosper as citizens with agency. Radically re-envisioning the role of women in the home, workforce, and marketplace, these writers also made gender a vital concern of their work. Still, working from the South, the authors were often subject to the whims of a northern literary market. Their visions of citizenship depended on their readership's deference to conventional claims of duty, labor, reputation, and property ownership. The circumstances surrounding the production and circulation of their writing blunted the full impact of the period's literary imagination and fostered a drift into the stereotypical depictions and other strictures that marked the rise of Jim Crow. Sharon D. Kennedy-Nolle blends literary history with archival research to assess the significance of Reconstruction literature as a genre. Founded on witness and dream, the pathbreaking work of its writers made an enduring, if at times contradictory, contribution to American literature and history.
The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama by
Published to mark the Civil War sesquicentennial, The Yellowhammer War collects new essays on Alabama's role in, and experience of, the bloody national conflict and its aftermath. During the first winter of the war, Confederate soldiers derided the men of an Alabama Confederate unit for their yellow-trimmed uniforms that allegedly resembled the plumage of the yellow-shafted flicker or "yellowhammer" (now the Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, and the state bird of Alabama). The soldiers' nickname, "Yellowhammers," came from this epithet. After the war, Alabama veterans proudly wore yellowhammer feathers in their hats or lapels when attending reunions. Celebrations throughout the state have often expanded on that pageantry and glorified the figures, events, and battles of the Civil War with sometimes dubious attention to historical fact and little awareness of those who supported, resisted, or tolerated the war off the battlefield. Many books about Alabama's role in the Civil War have focused serious attention on the military and political history of the war. The Yellowhammer War likewise examines the military and political history of Alabama's Civil War contributions, but it also covers areas of study usually neglected by centennial scholars, such as race, women, the home front, and Reconstruction. From Patricia A. Hoskins's look at Jews in Alabama during the Civil War and Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño's examination of white women's attitudes during secession to Harriet E. Amos Doss's study of the reaction of Alabamians to Lincoln's Assassination and Jason J. Battles's essay on the Freedman's Bureau, readers are treated to a broader canvas of topics on the Civil War and the state. CONTRIBUTORS Jason J. Battles / Lonnie A. Burnett / Harriet E. Amos Doss / Bertis English / Michael W. Fitzgerald / Jennifer Lynn Gross / Patricia A. Hoskins / Kenneth W. Noe / Victoria E. Ott / Terry L. Seip / Ben H. Severance / Kristopher A. Teters / Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño / Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins / Brian Steel Wills Published in Cooperation with the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South