2) Tuesday, January 23. Reconstruction's Legacy and Westward Expansion

Story Line:
Reconstruction was a moment of hope for a more inclusive democracy. But peace among whites was a more urgent political goal than integration. The failure to impeach President Johnson in 1867 paved the way for Southern "redemption," a movement confirmed by the "compromise of 1877" between Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats. Out West, Native Americans were driven out of existence.

Review Questions for Discussion II

 

[Lecture 1] Outline [Lecture 3]

Readings for lecture 2

  • HRC Document Number: DJ2312228784
  • Ulysses Grant, Observations on Conditions in the South, 1865
  • Black Code of Mississippi, 1865
  • Fourteenth Amendment, 1868
  • Frederick Douglas to Josephine Griffing, Rochester, 1868
  • Constitution of the State of Mississippi, 1890 (The Franchise)
  • Native American Voices: The Battle of the Little Bighorn, Two Moons (Cheyenne), 1876

Images for lecture 2:


This is a White Man's Government


All the Difference in the World


The Modern Samson


Patience on a Monument


Colored Rule in a Reconstructed State


Ku Klux Klan Costumes, 1868
Lecture Outline [return to top]

I. The Problem of Reconstruction

W. E. B. DuBois predicted that the twentieth century would be the century of the color line. The Souls of Black Folks (1903); Founding editor in 1910 of The Crisis; Black Reconstruction (1935).

II. Presidential Reconstruction

III. Congress responded

Thirteenth Amendment (1865) ; Civil Rights Acts of 1866; Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments; Civil Rights Act of 1875; Freedmen's Bureau (1866); Due Process and Equal Protection.

Pictorial Interlude

IV. Johnson's 1868 Impeachment

V. "Let us have peace" (U. Grant).

Northern Americans preach moderation toward the South and oneness among whites, even if that means reaffirming the color line

VI. Conflict between Black Leaders and Feminists

VII. Legacy: Segregation and Some Seeds of Racial Justice

VIII-Indian removal

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