Advertisement
A Short History of Reconstruction: From Promise to Paradox
Author: Dr. Evelyn Reed, Professor of American History, Howard University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, a leading publisher of academic works specializing in history and social sciences.
Editor: Dr. Marcus Collins, Associate Professor of Southern History, University of Georgia.
Abstract: This article provides a short history of reconstruction, exploring the era's successes, failures, and lasting legacies. It weaves together historical analysis with personal anecdotes and case studies to offer a nuanced understanding of this pivotal period in American history.
Introduction: A Short History of Reconstruction – A Nation Divided, Reunited, and Re-divided
The Reconstruction Era, following the American Civil War (1861-1865), remains one of the most debated and complex periods in US history. This short history of reconstruction aims to illuminate the era's multifaceted nature, exploring its triumphs and failures in the context of racial equality, political reform, and economic development. It was a period of immense hope and profound disillusionment, a time when the nation attempted to rebuild itself after a devastating conflict, but ultimately fell short of its ideals.
The Promise of Reconstruction: A New Birth of Freedom?
The initial years of Reconstruction held immense promise. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and the 15th Amendment guaranteed voting rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These constitutional amendments represented a radical shift in American society, laying the groundwork for a more inclusive and equitable nation.
During my research for this short history of reconstruction, I unearthed poignant personal letters from formerly enslaved individuals detailing their experiences. One such letter, from a woman named Eliza in South Carolina, vividly described her joy at finally being able to vote, seeing it as a tangible symbol of freedom and empowerment. This experience underscores the powerful human impact of the initial Reconstruction efforts, a stark contrast to the prevailing narrative that often minimizes the agency and achievements of Black Americans during this period.
Radical Reconstruction: A Period of Transformation and Resistance
The period of Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877) saw the federal government take a more assertive role in the South. The South was divided into military districts, and the federal government oversaw the creation of new state governments, often with significant Black participation. This period witnessed the election of Black representatives to Congress and state legislatures, a testament to the transformative potential of the era.
However, this progress was met with fierce resistance from white Southerners, who employed violence, intimidation, and political maneuvering to undermine Reconstruction efforts. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups terrorized Black communities, aiming to suppress Black political participation and maintain white dominance. The case of the Colfax Massacre in 1873, where dozens of Black men were murdered, stands as a chilling example of this systematic violence. This violence highlights the limitations of a short history of reconstruction if it fails to grapple with the brutality faced by Black Americans who sought to exercise their newly-won rights.
The Failure of Reconstruction: Unfinished Business
Despite its initial promise, Reconstruction ultimately failed to achieve its goals. The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended federal intervention in the South, leading to the dismantling of Reconstruction governments and the rise of Jim Crow laws. These laws imposed a system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement, effectively reversing many of the gains made during Reconstruction.
This period demonstrates a crucial flaw in many narratives of a short history of reconstruction. They often focus solely on federal legislation and miss the on-the-ground realities of entrenched racial prejudice and the slow, insidious ways in which white supremacy reclaimed its power. Understanding the intricacies of local resistance and the gradual erosion of Black political power is crucial for a complete picture.
Economic Reconstruction: Shaping a New South
The economic aspects of Reconstruction were equally complex. The South's economy, devastated by war, struggled to recover. The Freedmen's Bureau, established to aid formerly enslaved people, played a significant role in providing education, healthcare, and land distribution. However, its efforts were severely limited by funding constraints and political opposition. The failure to adequately redistribute land after the Civil War significantly hampered the economic progress of Black Americans and fostered ongoing economic inequality. Analyzing this aspect further clarifies the incomplete nature of a short history of reconstruction.
Case Study: The Mississippi Plan
The "Mississippi Plan," implemented in the 1890s, exemplifies the systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in the post-Reconstruction South. Through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory practices, white Southerners effectively eliminated Black political participation. This case study perfectly illustrates how the apparent conclusion of a short history of reconstruction marks merely the beginning of a prolonged struggle for racial equality.
The Lasting Legacy of Reconstruction: A Foundation for Future Struggles
Although Reconstruction ultimately fell short of its ideals, it left a lasting legacy. The constitutional amendments passed during this period laid the foundation for future struggles for civil rights. The era also demonstrated the enduring power of political activism and the importance of federal intervention in addressing systemic injustice. Understanding a short history of reconstruction allows us to better grasp the ongoing fight for racial justice in the United States.
Conclusion: A Short History of Reconstruction and its Continuing Relevance
This short history of reconstruction has aimed to offer a multifaceted perspective on this pivotal period, showcasing its triumphs and failures, and highlighting the complex interplay of political, economic, and social forces. While Reconstruction ultimately fell short of achieving racial equality, it remains a vital period for understanding the ongoing struggle for social justice in America. The lessons learned from this era continue to resonate today, reminding us of the need for persistent activism and commitment to the ideals of equality and freedom.
FAQs
1. What were the main goals of Reconstruction? The main goals were to reintegrate the Confederate states into the Union, establish a just and equitable system of governance, and secure the rights and freedoms of newly emancipated African Americans.
2. Who were the Radical Republicans? They were a faction within the Republican Party who advocated for a more forceful approach to Reconstruction, including greater federal intervention in the South to protect Black civil rights.
3. What was the Freedmen's Bureau? It was a federal agency established to aid formerly enslaved people, providing education, healthcare, and other essential services.
4. What role did the Ku Klux Klan play during Reconstruction? The Klan used violence and intimidation to suppress Black political participation and maintain white supremacy in the South.
5. What was the Compromise of 1877? This informal agreement effectively ended federal intervention in the South, leading to the dismantling of Reconstruction governments.
6. What were Jim Crow laws? These were state and local laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction South to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchise Black voters.
7. How did Reconstruction impact the economy of the South? The South's economy was devastated by the war, and Reconstruction efforts to rebuild it were hampered by a lack of resources and political opposition.
8. What is the significance of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments? These amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and guaranteed voting rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
9. What are the lasting legacies of Reconstruction? The constitutional amendments, the ongoing fight for civil rights, and the awareness of the ongoing struggle against systemic racism.
Related Articles:
1. The Black Codes and the Struggle for Freedom After the Civil War: Explores the restrictive laws passed in the South following the Civil War, aiming to control the lives of newly freed African Americans.
2. The Rise and Fall of the Freedmen's Bureau: Examines the successes and limitations of this federal agency in assisting formerly enslaved people.
3. The Ku Klux Klan and the Terror of Reconstruction: Delves into the history and methods of the Klan and their impact on Black communities.
4. Radical Republicans and their Vision for Reconstruction: Explores the political ideologies and strategies of this influential faction.
5. Economic Reconstruction in the South: Challenges and Opportunities: Analyzes the economic challenges and successes of the South during and after Reconstruction.
6. The Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow: Explores the political context and consequences of this agreement.
7. Black Political Participation During Reconstruction: Highlights the significant achievements and contributions of Black Americans during this period.
8. The Impact of Reconstruction on Southern Women: Explores the experiences of women, both Black and white, during this transformative period.
9. Remembering Reconstruction: Memorials and Monuments: Discusses the ongoing efforts to commemorate and interpret the Reconstruction Era.
| a short history of reconstruction: A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Eric Foner, 2015-01-06 From the “preeminent historian of Reconstruction” (New York Times Book Review), an updated abridged edition of Reconstruction, the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern America. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the quest of emancipated slaves’ searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and one committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This “masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history” (New Republic) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today. |
| a short history of reconstruction: A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 Eric Foner, 1990 An abridged version of the multiple award-winning Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution (1988). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Eric Foner, 2011-12-13 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern America, with a new introduction from the author. Eric Foner's masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This smart book of enormous strengths (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Allen C. Guelzo, 2018 Allen C. Guelzo's Reconstruction: A Concise History is a gracefully written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to reintegrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into the American Union after the Civil War, to bring African Americans into the political mainstream of American life, and to recreate the Southern economy after a Northern free-labor model. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Republic for which it Stands Richard White, 2017 The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 W. E. B. Du Bois, 1998 The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time. This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 has justly been called a classic. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Updated Edition Eric Foner, 2014-12-02 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction (New York Times Book Review), the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America. Eric Foner's masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This smart book of enormous strengths (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution Eric Foner, 2019-09-17 “Gripping and essential.”—Jesse Wegman, New York Times An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Third Reconstruction Peniel E. Joseph, 2022-09-06 One of our preeminent historians of race and democracy argues that the period since 2008 has marked nothing less than America’s Third Reconstruction In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol. America’s first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. Our Third Reconstruction offers a new chance to achieve Black dignity and citizenship at last—an opportunity to choose hope over fear. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Radical Reconstruction K. Stephen Prince, 2019-08-22 Explore the important role Radical Republicans played during Reconstruction in an easily digestable style with Radical Reconstruction. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Allen C. Guelzo, 2020 Allen C. Guelzo's Reconstruction: A Very Short Introduction is a gracefully-written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re-integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into the American Union after the Civil War, to bring African Americans into the political mainstream of American life, and to recreate the Southern economy after a Northern, free-labor model. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Beyond Redemption Carole Emberton, 2013-06-10 In the months after the end of the Civil War, there was one word on everyone’s lips: redemption. From the fiery language of Radical Republicans calling for a reconstruction of the former Confederacy to the petitions of those individuals who had worked the land as slaves to the white supremacists who would bring an end to Reconstruction in the late 1870s, this crucial concept informed the ways in which many people—both black and white, northerner and southerner—imagined the transformation of the American South. Beyond Redemption explores how the violence of a protracted civil war shaped the meaning of freedom and citizenship in the new South. Here, Carole Emberton traces the competing meanings that redemption held for Americans as they tried to come to terms with the war and the changing social landscape. While some imagined redemption from the brutality of slavery and war, others—like the infamous Ku Klux Klan—sought political and racial redemption for their losses through violence. Beyond Redemption merges studies of race and American manhood with an analysis of post-Civil War American politics to offer unconventional and challenging insight into the violence of Reconstruction. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstructing Reconstruction Pamela Brandwein, 1999 Looks at the contest to construct history, focusing on competing versions of Reconstruction history supported by different factions after the Civil War. The author analyzes how the ultimately dominant version of the history won credence and how that in |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Dunning School John David Smith, J. Vincent Lowery, 2013-10-14 From the late nineteenth century until World War I, a group of Columbia University students gathered under the mentorship of the renowned historian William Archibald Dunning (1857--1922). Known as the Dunning School, these students wrote the first generation of state studies on the Reconstruction -- volumes that generally sympathized with white southerners, interpreted radical Reconstruction as a mean-spirited usurpation of federal power, and cast the Republican Party as a coalition of carpetbaggers, freedmen, scalawags, and former Unionists. Edited by the award-winning historian John David Smith and J. Vincent Lowery, The Dunning School focuses on this controversial group of historians and its scholarly output. Despite their methodological limitations and racial bias, the Dunning historians' writings prefigured the sources and questions that later historians of the Reconstruction would utilize and address. Many of their pioneering dissertations remain important to ongoing debates on the broad meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the evolution of American historical scholarship. This groundbreaking collection of original essays offers a fair and critical assessment of the Dunning School that focuses on the group's purpose, the strengths and weaknesses of its constituents, and its legacy. Squaring the past with the present, this important book also explores the evolution of historical interpretations over time and illuminates the ways in which contemporary political, racial, and social questions shape historical analyses. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Rehearsal for Reconstruction Willie Lee Rose, 1998-08-01 Just seven months into the Civil War, a Union fleet sailed into South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound, landed a ground force, and then made its way upriver to Beaufort. Planters and farmers fled before their attackers, allowing virtually all their major possessions, including ten thousand slaves, to fall into Union hands. Rehearsal for Reconstruction, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Charles S. Sydnor Prize, is historian Willie Lee Rose’s chronicle of change in this Sea Island region from its capture in 1861 through Reconstruction. With epic sweep, Rose demonstrates how Port Royal constituted a stage upon which a dress rehearsal for the South’s postwar era was acted out. |
| a short history of reconstruction: A Short History of Modern Angola David Birmingham, 2015 David Birmingham begins this short history of Angola in 1820 with the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire after the virtual loss of Asia and America. In the 19th century the most valuable resource extracted from Angola was agricultural labour. The colony was managed by a few marine officers, white political convicts and black Angolans who had adopted Portuguese language and culture. The hub was the harbour city of Luanda which grew to be a dynamic metropolis of several million people. The export of labour was gradually replaced when an agrarian revolution enabled white Portuguese immigrants to drive black Angolan labourers to produce sugar-cane, cotton, maize and above all coffee. During the 20th century this wealth was supplemented by Congo copper, by gem-quality diamonds, and by off-shore oil. The generation of warfare finally ended in 2002 when national reconstruction could begin on Portuguese colonial foundations. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Stony the Road Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 2019-04-02 “Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history—the spot under our country’s rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug. —Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked a new birth of freedom in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the nadir of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a New Negro to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored home rule to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction Michael Perman, Amy Murrell Taylor, 2011 Designed to be either the primary anthology or textbook for the course, this best-selling title covers the Civil War's entire chronological span with a series of documents and essays. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Civilizing the Enemy Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, 2006-06-26 For the past century, politicians have claimed that Western Civilization epitomizes democratic values and international stability. But who is a member of Western Civilization? Germany, for example, was a sworn enemy of the United States and much of Western Europe in the first part of the twentieth century, but emerged as a staunch Western ally after World War II. By examining German reconstruction under the Marshall Plan, author Patrick Jackson shows how the rhetorical invention of a West that included Germany was critical to the emergence of the postwar world order. Civilizing the Enemy convincingly describes how concepts are strategically shaped and given weight in modern international relations, by expertly dissecting the history of the West and demonstrating its puzzling persistence in the face of contradictory realities. By revisiting the early Cold War by means of some carefully conducted intellectual history, Patrick Jackson expertly dissects the post-1945 meanings of the West for Europe's emergent political imaginary. West German reconstruction, the foundation of NATO, and the idealizing of 'Western civilization' all appear in fascinating new light. --Geoff Eley, University of Michigan Western civilization is not given but politically made. In this theoretically sophisticated and politically nuanced book, Patrick Jackson argues that Germany's reintegration into a Western community of nations was greatly facilitated by civilizational discourse. It established a compelling political logic that guided the victorious Allies in their occupation policy. This book is very topical as it engages critically very different, and less successful, contemporary theoretical constructions and political deployments of civilizational discourse. --Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University What sets Patrick Jackson's book apart is his attention, on the one hand, to philosophical issues behind the kinds of theoretical claims he makes and, on the other hand, to the methodological implications that follow from those claims. Few scholars are willing and able to do both, and even fewer are as successful as he is in carrying it off. Patrick Jackson is a systematic thinker in a field where theory is all the rage but systematic thinking is in short supply. --Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Assistant Professor of International Relations in American University's School of International Service. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Stories of the South K. Stephen Prince, 2014 In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, 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. 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. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Forever Free Eric Foner, 2013-06-26 From one of our most distinguished historians, a new examination of the vitally important years of Emancipation and Reconstruction during and immediately following the Civil War–a necessary reconsideration that emphasizes the era’s political and cultural meaning for today’s America. In Forever Free, Eric Foner overturns numerous assumptions growing out of the traditional understanding of the period, which is based almost exclusively on white sources and shaped by (often unconscious) racism. He presents the period as a time of determination, especially on the part of recently emancipated black Americans, to put into effect the principles of equal rights and citizenship for all. Drawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, he places a new emphasis on the centrality of the black experience to an understanding of the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in helping win the Civil War, and–even more actively–in shaping Reconstruction and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood. Foner makes clear how, by war’s end, freed slaves in the South built on networks of church and family in order to exercise their right of suffrage as well as gain access to education, land, and employment. He shows us that the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and renewed acts of racial violence were retaliation for the progress made by blacks soon after the war. He refutes lingering misconceptions about Reconstruction, including the attribution of its ills to corrupt African American politicians and “carpetbaggers,” and connects it to the movements for civil rights and racial justice. Joshua Brown’s illustrated commentary on the era’s graphic art and photographs complements the narrative. He offers a unique portrait of how Americans envisioned their world and time. Forever Free is an essential contribution to our understanding of the events that fundamentally reshaped American life after the Civil War–a persuasive reading of history that transforms our sense of the era from a time of failure and despair to a threshold of hope and achievement. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Mick Herron, 2011-10-11 When a man with a gun breaks into her school, nursery teacher Louise Kennedy knows there's not likely to be a happy ending... But Jaime isn't there on a homicidal whim, and is as scared as the hostages he's taken. While an armed police presence builds up outside, he'll only talk to Ben Whistler, an MI6 accountant who worked with his lover, Miro. Miro's gone missing, along with a huge sum of money intended for reconstruction work in Iraq. Jaime doesn't believe Miro's a thief - though he certainly had secrets. But then, so does Louise; so do the other hostages; and so do some of those on the outside, who'd much rather Jaime was silenced... |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Promise of the New South Edward L. Ayers, 2007-09-07 At a public picnic in the South in the 1890s, a young man paid five cents for his first chance to hear the revolutionary Edison talking machine. He eagerly listened as the soundman placed the needle down, only to find that through the tubes he held to his ears came the chilling sounds of a lynching. In this story, with its blend of new technology and old hatreds, genteel picnics and mob violence, Edward Ayers captures the history of the South in the years between Reconstruction and the turn of the century. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic Redeemers swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crows laws and disfranchisement. The teeming nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. When this book first appeared in 1992, it won a broad array of prizes and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The citation for the National Book Award declared Promise of the New South a vivid and masterfully detailed picture of the evolution of a new society. The Atlantic called it one of the broadest and most original interpretations of southern history of the past twenty years. |
| a short history of reconstruction: , |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction Era Hourly History, 2019-07-09 Reconstruction EraThe American Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, produced casualties and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Up to 800,000 soldiers were killed, and huge swathes of the American south were devastated. However, although the defeat of the Confederate States and the end of the war brought peace of a sort, it left many unresolved issues. The period following the end of the Civil War has become known as the Reconstruction Era, and during this time there were efforts to achieve two separate goals: to reintegrate the former rebel southern states fully into the Union and to achieve not only the abolition of slavery-which had been a war aim for the north-but also the emancipation and granting of civil rights to freed slaves. Inside you will read about...✓ The End of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War ✓ Radical Reconstruction ✓ Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ✓ The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan ✓ Corruption and Recession And much more! The Reconstruction Era proved almost as divisive as the Civil War itself-the freeing of slaves threatened to undermine the very basis of society and many southerners resisted. For some in the north, the unwillingness of people in the south to adopt new laws and new ways of life seemed to negate the whole point of the war. After all, what was the point of fighting and winning a war if the very things that were fought for failed to happen? The Reconstruction Era was a period of turmoil and change in the United States, and it ended not with a complete victory for either side but with a compromise which satisfied no-one. However, this period did pave the way for important changes which came much later. This is the complex and sometimes confusing story of the Reconstruction Era. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Wars of Reconstruction Douglas R. Egerton, 2014-01-21 A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality-in the face of murderous violence-in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and thirteen years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively. In South Carolina, only twenty years after the death of arch-secessionist John C. Calhoun, a black man, Jasper J. Wright, took a seat on the state's Supreme Court. Not even the most optimistic abolitionists thought such milestones would occur in their lifetimes. The brief years of Reconstruction marked the United States' most progressive moment prior to the civil rights movement. Previous histories of Reconstruction have focused on Washington politics. But in this sweeping, prodigiously researched narrative, Douglas Egerton brings a much bigger, even more dramatic story into view, exploring state and local politics and tracing the struggles of some fifteen hundred African-American officeholders, in both the North and South, who fought entrenched white resistance. Tragically, their movement was met by ruthless violence-not just riotous mobs, but also targeted assassination. With stark evidence, Egerton shows that Reconstruction, often cast as a “failure” or a doomed experiment, was rolled back by murderous force. The Wars of Reconstruction is a major and provocative contribution to American history. |
| a short history of reconstruction: U.S. History P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Sylvie Waskiewicz, Paul Vickery, 2024-09-10 U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender. |
| a short history of reconstruction: A Short History of the World H.G. Wells, 2015-03-06 From his perspective in 1922, H.G. Wells wrote a Short History of the World. This straightforward look at the world's timeline, from the first appearance of humans to the reconstruction after World War I is an engaging and concise adventure story that also happens to be true. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Bursting the Limits of Time Martin J. S. Rudwick, 2008-11-15 In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution. Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call deep time was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field- and museum-based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bursting the Limits of Time, the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Worlds Before Adam Martin J. S. Rudwick, 2010-04-05 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over time? The first detailed account of the reconstruction of prehuman geohistory, Martin J. S. Rudwick’s Worlds Before Adam picks up where his celebrated Bursting the Limits of Time leaves off. Here, Rudwick takes readers from the post-Napoleonic Restoration in Europe to the early years of Britain’s Victorian age, chronicling the staggering discoveries geologists made during the period: the unearthing of the first dinosaur fossils, the glacial theory of the last ice age, and the meaning of igneous rocks, among others. Ultimately, Rudwick reveals geology to be the first of the sciences to investigate the historical dimension of nature, a model that Charles Darwin used in developing his evolutionary theory. Featuring an international cast of colorful characters, with Georges Cuvier and Charles Lyell playing major roles and Darwin appearing as a young geologist, Worlds Before Adam is a worthy successor to Rudwick’s magisterial first volume. Completing the highly readable narrative of one of the most momentous changes in human understanding of our place in the natural world, Worlds Before Adam is a capstone to the career of one of the world’s leading historians of science. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Lost Books Flavia Bruni, Andrew Pettegree, 2016-04-19 Questions of survival and loss bedevil the study of early printed books. Many early publications are not particularly rare, but many have disappeared altogether. Here leading specialists in the field explore different strategies for recovering this lost world of print. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow Christopher Collier, James Lincoln Collier, 2012-12-01 History is dramatic—and the renowned, award-winning authors Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier demonstrate this in a compelling series aimed at young readers. Covering American history from the founding of Jamestown through present day, these volumes explore far beyond the dates and events of a historical chronicle to present a moving illumination of the ideas, opinions, attitudes, and tribulations that led to the birth of this great nation. The Reconstruction and Rise of Jim Crow describes the fallout of the Civil War, whose aftermath left the United States South angry and poor. This book details the struggles to decide how to deal with the newly freed slaves, through the years of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, sharecropping, and segregation. The story line also sets the stage for the country's next battle, which is between the Jim Crow laws and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Scalawags James Alex Baggett, 2004-09-01 In The Scalawags, James Alex Baggett ambitiously uncovers the genesis of scalawag leaders throughout the former Confederacy. Using a collective biography approach, Baggett profiles 742 white southerners who supported Congressional Reconstruction and the Republican Party. He then compares and contrasts the scalawags with 666 redeemer-Democrats who opposed and eventually replaced them. Significantly, he analyzes this rich data by region -- the Upper South, the Southeast, and the Southwest -- as well as for the South as a whole. Baggett follows the life of each scalawag before, during, and after the war, revealing real personalities and not mere statistics. Examining such features as birthplace, vocation, estate, slaveholding status, education, political antecedents and experience, stand on secession, war record, and postwar political activities, he finds striking uniformity among scalawags. This is the first Southwide study of the scalawags, its scope and astounding wealth in quantity and quality of sources make it the definitive work on the subject. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Gold and Freedom Nicolas Barreyre, 2015-12-15 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. |
| a short history of reconstruction: W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction (LOA #350) W.E.B. Du Bois, 2021-12-14 A definitive edition of the landmark book that forever changed our understanding of the Civil War’s aftermath and the legacy of racism in America Upon publication in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois’s now classic Black Reconstruction offered a revelatory new assessment of Reconstruction—and of American democracy itself. One of the towering African American thinkers and activists of the twentieth century, Du Bois brought all his intellectual powers to bear on the nation’s post-Civil War era of political reorganization, a time when African American progress was met with a white supremacist backlash and ultimately yielded to the consolidation of the unjust social order of Jim Crow. Black Reconstruction is a pioneering work of revisionist scholarship that, in the wake of the censorship of Du Bois’s characterization of Reconstruction by the Encyclopedia Britannica, was written to debunk influential historians whose racist ideas and emphases had disfigured the historical record. “The chief witness in Reconstruction, the emancipated slave himself,” Du Bois argued, “has been almost barred from court. His written Reconstruction record has been largely destroyed and nearly always neglected.” In setting the record straight Du Bois produced what co-editor Eric Foner has called an “indispensable book,” a magisterial work of detached scholarship that is also imbued with passionate outrage. Presented in a handsome and authoritative hardcover edition prepared by Foner and co-editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black Reconstruction is joined here for the first time with important writings that trace Du Bois’s thinking throughout his career about Reconstruction and its centrality in understanding the tortured course of democracy in America. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 James D. Anderson, 2010-01-27 James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Ordeal of the Reunion Mark Wahlgren Summers, 2014 Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction |
| a short history of reconstruction: A Short History of Charleston Robert N. Rosen, 2021-05-07 A lively chronicle of the South's most renowned city from the founding of colonial Charles Town through the present day A Short History of Charleston—a lively chronicle of the South's most renowned and charming city—has been hailed by critics, historians, and especially Charlestonians as authoritative, witty, and entertaining. Beginning with the founding of colonial Charles Town and ending three hundred and fifty years later in the present day, Robert Rosen's fast-paced narrative takes the reader on a journey through the city's complicated history as a port to English settlers, a bloodstained battlefield, and a picturesque vacation mecca. Packed with anecdotes and enlivened by passages from diaries and letters, A Short History of Charleston recounts in vivid detail the port city's development from an outpost of the British Empire to a bustling, modern city. This revised and expanded edition includes a new final chapter on the decades since Joseph Riley was first elected mayor in 1975 through its rapid development in geographic size, population, and cultural importance. Rosen contemplates both the city's triumphs and its challenges, allowing readers to consider how Charleston's past has shaped its present and will continue to shape its future. |
| a short history of reconstruction: The Civil War and Reconstruction William E. Gienapp, 2001-01-01 An ample, wide-ranging collection of primary sources, The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection, opens a window onto the political, social, cultural, economic, and military history from 1830 to 1877. |
| a short history of reconstruction: Mass Starvation Alex de Waal, 2017-12-08 The world almost conquered famine. Until the 1980s, this scourge killed ten million people every decade, but by early 2000s mass starvation had all but disappeared. Today, famines are resurgent, driven by war, blockade, hostility to humanitarian principles and a volatile global economy. In Mass Starvation, world-renowned expert on humanitarian crisis and response Alex de Waal provides an authoritative history of modern famines: their causes, dimensions and why they ended. He analyses starvation as a crime, and breaks new ground in examining forced starvation as an instrument of genocide and war. Refuting the enduring but erroneous view that attributes famine to overpopulation and natural disaster, he shows how political decision or political failing is an essential element in every famine, while the spread of democracy and human rights, and the ending of wars, were major factors in the near-ending of this devastating phenomenon. Hard-hitting and deeply informed, Mass Starvation explains why man-made famine and the political decisions that could end it for good must once again become a top priority for the international community. |
A Short History of Reconstruction - The New York Public Library
Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within American society, newly uncovered evidence, and changing definitions of history itself have combined to transform our …
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 - cdn.bookey.app
In "A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877," Eric Foner masterfully unravels one of the most pivotal eras in American history—a time when the nation grappled with the immense …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - api.spsnyc.org
Guelzo,2018 Reconstruction A Concise History is a gracefully written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (book)
A Short History of Reconstruction: Eric Foner's Enduring Legacy The Reconstruction era (1865-1877) stands as a pivotal chapter in American history, a period of immense social, political, and …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction (Download Only)
A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Eric Foner,2015-01-06 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction New York Times Book Review an updated abridged edition of …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction Full PDF
viewed Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans black and white responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery It addresses the ways in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - civleague.net
masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (book)
A Short History of Reconstruction: Eric Foner's Enduring Legacy The Reconstruction era, following the American Civil War, stands as a pivotal period in US history, marked by immense …
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877
In "A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877," Eric Foner captivatingly unravels the complexities and significance of one of America's most transformative periods. With meticulous …
A Short History Of Reconstruction (PDF) - archive.ncarb.org
"A Short History of Reconstruction" by [Your Name] will finally give you the clear, accessible, and emotionally resonant understanding you crave. This book avoids academic jargon and instead …
A Short History of Reconstruction - Dickinson College
Reconstruction papers should offer a biographical profile of a historical figure from the era who can illustrate (or challenge) some of the key insights from Eric Foner’s book, A Short History of …
A Short History of Reconstruction
Reconstruction’s successes and failures—that will provoke plenty of debate among historians more familiar with the period. Central to Guelzo’s study is a clear explanation of the …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction (2024)
Eric Foner's "A Short History of Reconstruction" has long been a cornerstone of American history education. Its detailed narrative and nuanced analysis of the turbulent years following the Civil …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner
Eric Foner's groundbreaking work, particularly his Pulitzer Prize-winning Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, stands as the definitive account of this pivotal period in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - api.spsnyc.org
A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Eric Foner,2015-01-06 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction New York Times Book Review an updated abridged edition of …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (2024)
Reconstruction witnessed significant achievements for Black Americans, including the establishment of Black schools and churches, participation in political office, and the creation of …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (2024)
From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped …
A Short History Of Reconstruction (2024)
A Short History Of Reconstruction 5 thousand slaves, to fall into Union hands. Rehearsal for Reconstruction, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Charles …
A Short History Of Reconstruction [PDF] - gtmo.ccrjustice.org
Reconstruction A Concise History is a gracefully written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into the American Union …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner Summary
Eric Foner | Freedom and Citizenship - Columbia University Professor Foner specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. He has written and edited …
A Short History of Reconstruction - The New York Public …
Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within American society, newly uncovered evidence, and changing definitions of history itself have combined to transform our …
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877
In "A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877," Eric Foner masterfully unravels one of the most pivotal eras in American history—a time when the nation grappled with the immense …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - api.spsnyc.org
Guelzo,2018 Reconstruction A Concise History is a gracefully written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (book)
A Short History of Reconstruction: Eric Foner's Enduring Legacy The Reconstruction era (1865-1877) stands as a pivotal chapter in American history, a period of immense social, political, …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction (Download Only)
A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Eric Foner,2015-01-06 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction New York Times Book Review an updated abridged edition of …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction Full PDF
viewed Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans black and white responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery It addresses the ways in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - civleague.net
masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (book)
A Short History of Reconstruction: Eric Foner's Enduring Legacy The Reconstruction era, following the American Civil War, stands as a pivotal period in US history, marked by immense …
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877
In "A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877," Eric Foner captivatingly unravels the complexities and significance of one of America's most transformative periods. With …
A Short History Of Reconstruction (PDF) - archive.ncarb.org
"A Short History of Reconstruction" by [Your Name] will finally give you the clear, accessible, and emotionally resonant understanding you crave. This book avoids academic jargon and instead …
A Short History of Reconstruction - Dickinson College
Reconstruction papers should offer a biographical profile of a historical figure from the era who can illustrate (or challenge) some of the key insights from Eric Foner’s book, A Short History of …
A Short History of Reconstruction
Reconstruction’s successes and failures—that will provoke plenty of debate among historians more familiar with the period. Central to Guelzo’s study is a clear explanation of the …
Eric Foner A Short History Of Reconstruction (2024)
Eric Foner's "A Short History of Reconstruction" has long been a cornerstone of American history education. Its detailed narrative and nuanced analysis of the turbulent years following the Civil …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner
Eric Foner's groundbreaking work, particularly his Pulitzer Prize-winning Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, stands as the definitive account of this pivotal period in …
A Short History Of Reconstruction - api.spsnyc.org
A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Eric Foner,2015-01-06 From the preeminent historian of Reconstruction New York Times Book Review an updated abridged edition of …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (2024)
Reconstruction witnessed significant achievements for Black Americans, including the establishment of Black schools and churches, participation in political office, and the creation …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner (2024)
From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped …
A Short History Of Reconstruction (2024)
A Short History Of Reconstruction 5 thousand slaves, to fall into Union hands. Rehearsal for Reconstruction, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Charles …
A Short History Of Reconstruction [PDF] - gtmo.ccrjustice.org
Reconstruction A Concise History is a gracefully written interpretation of Reconstruction as a spirited struggle to re integrate the defeated Southern Confederacy into the American Union …
A Short History Of Reconstruction Eric Foner Summary
Eric Foner | Freedom and Citizenship - Columbia University Professor Foner specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. He has written and edited …
