History
Reconstruction in the South
Reconstruction in the South refers to the period following the American Civil War, during which the federal government sought to rebuild the Southern states and integrate formerly enslaved individuals into society. This era was marked by efforts to establish new political and social structures, including the passage of civil rights amendments and the establishment of Freedmen's Bureau to provide assistance to newly freed slaves.
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7 Key excerpts on "Reconstruction in the South"
eBook - PDF- Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Reconstruction would bring revolutionary circum- stances, but revolutions can also go backward. The Civil War and its aftermath wrought unprecedented changes in American society, law, and politics, but the underlying realities of economic power, racism, and judicial conserva- tism limited Reconstruction’s revolutionary potential. As never before, the nation had to determine the nature of federal-state relations, whether confiscated land could be redistributed, and how to bring justice to both freedpeople and aggrieved white southerners whose property and lives had been devastated. Americans were about to try to re- define citizenship, fundamental civil and political rights, and equality before law against unrelenting opposition. A disunited country faced the harrowing challenge of psycho- logical healing from a bloody and fratricidal war. How they would negotiate the tangled relationship between healing and justice would determine the fate of Reconstruction. Nowhere was the turmoil of Reconstruction more evi- dent than in national politics. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fought bitterly with Congress over the shaping of Reconstruction policies. Although a southerner, Johnson had always been a foe of the South’s wealthy planters, and his first acts as president suggested that he would be tough on “traitors.” Before the end of 1865, however, Johnson’s policies changed direction, and he became the protector of white southern interests. Johnson imagined a lenient and rapid “restoration” of the South to the Union rather than the funda- mental “reconstruction” that Republican congressmen favored. Between 1866 and 1868, the president and the Republican leadership in Congress engaged in a bitter power struggle over how to put the United States back together again. Before the struggle ceased, Con- gress had impeached the president, enfranchised freed- men, and given them a role in reconstructing the South.
eBook - PDFAfrican Americans in the Nineteenth Century
People and Perspectives
- Dixie Ray Haggard(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
African Americans during Reconstruction (1863–1877) Dawn J. Herd-Clark 7 R econstruction, the period immediately after the Civil War (1861–1865), was initially a period of substantial changes for African Americans living in the former southern slave states. Beginning in 1863, with the implementation of President Abraham Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for recon- structing the South, Reconstruction lasted until 1877, when the last of the federal troops were removed from the former Confederate states. During Reconstruction, African Americans, many of whom had been enslaved their entire lives, had an opportunity to experience freedom for the first time. This freedom allowed some African Americans to receive an education, own land, vote, and hold political office for the first time in their lives. By the end of the 19th century, however, freedom for African Americans living in the South would be limited because of racism and discrimination by southern whites and neglected by other segments of the American population. The rights African Americans fought to achieve during Reconstruction would be lost until the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Freedom There had always been a free African American population in the antebel- lum South, although their rights were limited by southern prejudice. Dur- ing the Civil War, the number of free blacks increased as slaves took the liberty of liberating themselves as Union troops approached. Even more slaves sought their freedom once President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, stating ‘‘all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and
eBook - PDF- P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, Sylvie Waskiewicz(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Openstax(Publisher)
The South, which had experienced catastrophic losses during the conflict, was reduced to political dependence and economic destitution. This humiliating condition led many southern whites to vigorously contest Union efforts to transform the South’s racial, economic, and social landscape. Supporters of equality grew increasingly dismayed at Reconstruction’s failure to undo the old system, which further compounded the staggering regional and racial inequalities in the United States. Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 451 16.1 Restoring the Union By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Describe Lincoln’s plan to restore the Union at the end of the Civil War • Discuss the tenets of Radical Republicanism • Analyze the success or failure of the Thirteenth Amendment The end of the Civil War saw the beginning of the Reconstruction era, when former rebel Southern states were integrated back into the Union. President Lincoln moved quickly to achieve the war’s ultimate goal: reunification of the country. He proposed a generous and non-punitive plan to return the former Confederate states speedily to the United States, but some Republicans in Congress protested, considering the president’s plan too lenient to the rebel states that had torn the country apart. The greatest flaw of Lincoln’s plan, according to this view, was that it appeared to forgive traitors instead of guaranteeing civil rights to former slaves. President Lincoln oversaw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, but he did not live to see its ratification. THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN From the outset of the rebellion in 1861, Lincoln’s overriding goal had been to bring the Southern states quickly back into the fold in order to restore the Union (Figure 16.3). In early December 1863, the president began the process of reunification by unveiling a three-part proposal known as the ten percent plan that outlined how the states would return.
eBook - PDFReconstruction in the United States
An Annotated Bibliography
- David Lincove(Author)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
140. Randall, James G. and David Donald. The Civil War and Reconstruction. 2nd ed., Revised With Enlarged Bibliography. Lexington, Ma.: D. C. Heath, 1969. 866p. 111. Maps. Ports. (2nd ed. originally published in 1961; 1st ed. by Randall, Boston: D.C. Heath, 1937) The last nine chapters of this book provide a survey of political, social and economic development during the Reconstmction period. The authors' approach is consistent with the revisionists of the 1960s, and they frequently cite other revisionist accounts written since the 1930s to reinforce the evidence showing that economic life in the South was active and growing quickly, that blacks made significant and important economic and social progress after emancipation, and that political and social life was not marked by shame. An extensive, mostly annotated bibliography is divided by periods and includes a section of biographical references. 141. Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States From the Compromise of 1850...[i\t\z varies]. 9 Vols. New York: Macmillan Co., 1893-1928. 111. Maps. Ports. Volume 4-7 cover the period of the Civil War and Reconstmction (vol. 4: 1862-1864; vol. 5: 1864-1866; vol. 6: 1866-1872; vol. 7: 1872-1877). Rhodes' treatment of Reconstmction focuses on political developments at the national and state levels. His work interprets American history from 1850 to 1877 as one of revolutionary change ending in a stronger, more unified nation and a nationalism that would strengthen in the decades after Reconstmction. Rhodes criticized President Johnson's political tactics and ineptness, and he supported federal power to ensure a loyal, reformed South as well as protection of the freedmen, but he strongly opposed the vengeful behavior of the Radicals. His racist views underpin his interpretation of Reconstmction as resulting in black mle, Republican coercion, and political cormption. General Historiography and Surveys of Reconstruction 27 142.
eBook - PDFA People and a Nation
A History of the United States
- Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
The ideology of free labor dictated that property should be respected and that individuals should be self-reliant. Racism endured and transformed into the even more virulent forms of Klan terror and theories of black degeneration. Concern for the human rights of African Americans and other reforms frequently had less appeal than moneymaking in an individualistic, industrializing society. New challenges began to overwhelm the aims of Reconstruction. How would the country develop its immense resources in an increasingly interconnected national econ- omy? Could farmers, industrial workers, immigrants, and capitalists coexist? Industrialization not only promised prosperity but also wrought increased exploitation of labor. Moreover, industry increased the nation’s power and laid the foundation for an enlarged American role in international affairs. In the wake of the Civil War, Americans faced two pro- found tasks—the achievement of healing and the dispens- ing of justice. Both had to occur, but they never developed in historical balance. Making sectional reunion compatible with black freedom and equality overwhelmed the imagination in American political culture, and the nation still faced much of this dilemma more than a century later. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 439 Suggestions for Further Reading Suggestions for Further Reading David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) Gregory P. Downs, Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861–1908 (2011) W.
eBook - PDF- Randall M. Miller(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
The lowliest white man could find comfort in the knowledge that he was the legal superior of even the wealthiest black freeman. Emancipation had changed all of this, and the amendments to the Constitution that guaranteed blacks full citizenship also made them the legal equals of all white men—a circumstance that many whites found abhorrent. The sum total of all these elements in Southern Reconstruction—blacks, carpet- baggers, occupation forces, Freedmen’s Bureau, scalawags, and poor whites—varied from state to state. Some states like South Carolina came to a semblance of bona fide republican governance. Others, like Virginia, reverted almost immediately to a form of Southern conservatism almost indistinguishable from the prewar form of governance; or they became so corrupt, like Louisiana, that they rivaled in infamy some of the most dishonest political machines to be found in the urban North. —James M. Volo Reconstruction | Political Life “This is a white man’s government. We regard the Reconstruction Acts (so called) of Congress as usurpations, and unconstitutional, revolution- ary, and void.”—Thomas Nast lampoons the Democratic platform and its unholy alliance of former confederates, Irish immigrants, and self- seeking Northern politicians. Courtesy Library of Congress. The Civil War, Reconstruction, and Industrialization of America, 1861–1900 284 GOVERNMENT Presidential Reconstruction On March 4, 1865, in his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln reiterated a policy of reconstruction that he had personally favored since the twin federal victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863.
eBook - PDFRace and Reunion
The Civil War in American Memory
- David W. Blight, David W. BLIGHT(Authors)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Belknap Press(Publisher)
. . bloody conºict . . . I may say if this war is to be forgotten, I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men remember? 18 By 1870, most white Southerners viewed Reconstruction as a hated, im-posed regime. In an editorial taking stock of the decade of the 1860s, the Lou-isville Courier-Journal never mentioned the end of slavery. The Louisville edi-tor gloriªed state rights, on the ruins of which “this thing called Reconstruction” had been built. The “peace” that reigned was “only that . . . which is a cessation of actual hostilities . . . the peace of the empire.” The suf-fering South, he said, was ruled by bayonets and “obnoxious constitutional amendments.” An exchange between the Louisville paper and the Cleveland Herald demonstrated the raw animosity out of which an unstable peace grew. — 1 0 6 — r a c e a n d r e u n i o n The Ohio paper rejoiced in the election of the African American Hiram Revels from Mississippi to the U.S. Senate. Revels’s appearance in the Senate, said the Herald, provided the “exclamation point of the rebellion.” Deªnitions of war guilt and causation were at stake. “The origin of our ‘late unpleasantness’—way back in the past,” declared the Cleveland paper, “was a determination on the part of the slaveowners to nationalize human bond-age.” But in the Louisville editor’s understanding, “the war originated in nothing the slaveowners did . . . or desired to do.” The war’s cause was the “destruction . . . the moral gangrene which curses every community in which New England’s inºuence is felt.” 19 In such venomous differences over the causes of the war, one can see why the most vigorous advocates of reconcilia-tion believed they had to banish slavery and race from the discussion. The bitter experiences of Reconstruction, and the impossibility of a postwar con-sensus on the war’s causes, all but guaranteed the irresolution deep at the heart of Civil War memory.
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