DOCSLIB.ORG

C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES of M16 GOLD0615 06 SE CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:51 PM Page 435

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES of M16 GOLD0615 06 SE CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:51 PM Page 435 M16_GOLD0615_06_SE_CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:32 PM Page 434 An elderly man reads a newspaper with the headline "Presidential Proclamation, Slavery," which refers to the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation in this painting by Henry Louis Stephens (1824–1882). 434 105500 C P Ed i /NJ/HSSL A G ldfi ld P N 434 C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES OF M16_GOLD0615_06_SE_CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:51 PM Page 435 Hear the Audio Hear the audio files for Chapter 16 at www.myhistorylab.com. WHITE SOUTHERNERS AND THE GHOSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY, 1865 (page 438) HOW DID southerners remember the war? How did it shape their response to Reconstruction? MORE THAN FREEDOM: AFRICAN AMERICAN ASPIRATIONS IN 1865 (page 439) WHAT WERE African Americans’ hopes for Reconstruction? FEDERAL RECONSTRUCTION, 1865–1870 (page 444) HOW DID Presidential Reconstruction differ from Congressional Reconstruction? COUNTER-RECONSTRUCTION, 1870–1874 (page 452) WHAT ROLE did violence play in Counter-Reconstruction? REDEMPTION, 1874–1877 (page 455) WHY DID the federal government abandon African Americans after 1872? MODEST GAINS (page 459) HOW AND why did Reconstruction end? 435 105500 C P Ed i /NJ/HSSL A G ldfi ld P N 435 C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES OF M16_GOLD0615_06_SE_CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:02 PM Page 436 436 CHAPTER 16 RECONSTRUCTION 1865–1877 ONE AMERICAN JOURNEY AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1871) When a dark and fearful strife Raged around the nation’s life, And the traitor plunged his steel Where your quivering hearts could feel, When your cause did need a friend, We were faithful to the end. With your soldiers, side by side, Helped we turn the battle’s tide, Till o’er ocean, stream and shore, Wave the rebel flag no more, And above the rescued sod Praises rose to freedom’s God. But to-day the traitor stands With crimson on his hands, Scowling ‘neath his brow of hate, On our weak and desolate, With the blood-rust on the knife Aimed at the nation’s life. Asking you to weakly yield All we won upon the field, To ignore, on land and flood, All the offerings of our blood, And to write above our slain “They have fought and died in vain.” Source: Maryemma Graham, ed., Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 81–83. Read the Document at www.myhistorylab.com Personal Journeys Online • N. J. Bell, Southern Railroad Man, 1865. A railroad conductor recalls the aftermath of the Civil War and its impact on a white family in Wilmington, NC. • Adelbert Ames, Letter from the Republican Governor of Mississippi, 1875. Letter to his wife expressing frustration at the violence against black voters in his state and his hope for federal intervention. 105500 C P Ed i /NJ/HSSL A G ldfi ld P N 436 C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES OF M16_GOLD0615_06_SE_CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:51 PM Page 437 RECONSTRUCTION 1865–1877 CHAPTER 16 437 CHRONOLOGY 1861 Tsar Alexander II frees the serfs of Russia. Republican regimes topple in North Carolina and Georgia. 1863 Lincoln proposes his Ten Percent Plan. 1871 Congress passes Ku Klux Klan Act. 1864 Congress proposes the Wade-Davis Bill. 1872 Freedmen’s Bureau closes down. 1865 Sherman issues Field Order No. 15. Liberal Republicans emerge as a separate party. Freedmen’s Bureau is established. Ulysses S. Grant is reelected. Andrew Johnson succeeds to the presidency, unveils his Reconstruction plan. 1873 Severe depression begins. Massachusetts desegregates all public facilities. Colfax Massacre occurs. Black citizens in several southern cities organize Union U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Slaughterhouse cases Leagues. weakens the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. Former Confederate states begin to pass black codes. Texas falls to the Democrats in the fall 1866 Congress passes Southern Homestead Act, Civil Rights elections. Act of 1866. 1874 White Leaguers attempt a coup against the Ku Klux Klan is founded. Republican government of New Orleans. Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is passed Democrats win off-year elections across the South (ratified in 1868). amid widespread fraud and violence. President Johnson goes on a speaking tour. 1875 Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1875. 1867 Congress passes Military Reconstruction Acts, 1876 Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Tenure of Office Act. Cruikshank nullifies Enforcement Act of 1870. 1868 President Johnson is impeached and tried in the Senate for Outcome of the presidential election between defying the Tenure of Office Act. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Republican Ulysses S. Grant is elected president. J. Tilden is contested. 1869 Fifteenth Amendment passed (ratified 1870). 1877 Compromise of 1877 makes Hayes president and ends Reconstruction. 1870 Congress passes Enforcement Act. Frances ELLEN Watkins Harper, the hand in dealing with their political problems. Harper’s appeal, author of this poem, pleaded with northerners not to abandon therefore, fell on deaf ears. The nation’s journey toward a more just African Americans in their quest for full equality. She appealed society took a major detour in the decade after the Civil War. both to their sense of fairness––that African Americans had Frances Harper’s personal journey was more rewarding. She was fought side-by-side and laid down their lives for the Union cause–– born into a free black family in Maryland, a slave state, in 1825. Or- and to their self-interest to not allow their winning the war, and phaned at the age of 3 and raised by her aunt and uncle, she attended the sacrifices that entailed, to be betrayed by losing the peace. a noted school for free blacks in Baltimore. By the time she was 25, At the time, 1871, Reconstruction was under full assault in she had become the first woman professor at a seminary in Ohio the South by white paramilitary groups associated with the Demo- which later became Wilberforce University. In 1853, Harper moved cratic Party. Though violence against the freedmen and their aspi- to Philadelphia where she worked in the Underground Railroad and rations had been persistent since the end of the Civil War, the became one of the few black women lecturers on abolition. In 1860, growing political power of blacks in the South after 1867 provoked she married Fenton Harper, and had a daughter with him. When he more organized and violent assaults on blacks and some of their died in 1864, she took her daughter and resumed lecturing, becoming white colleagues. The federal government attempted to quell these one of the first women of color to travel throughout the South in the disturbances with troops and legislation, but these measures were days after emancipation, helping to educate former slaves. largely ineffective. While a majority of northern whites had op- Although she arrived in the South with considerable hope, posed slavery, a majority also opposed racial equality. By 1871, a Harper left after five frustrating years. Violence against African Amer- consensus emerged in the North to allow southern whites a free icans and their white allies had escalated and threatened to reduce the 105500 C P Ed i /NJ/HSSL A G ldfi ld P N 43 C/M/Y/K DESIGN SERVICES OF M16_GOLD0615_06_SE_CH16.QXD 10/21/10 8:02 PM Page 438 438 CHAPTER 16 RECONSTRUCTION 1865–1877 former slaves to a permanent category of second-class citizenship. Her 1870 attempted to balance black rights and home rule, with poem was one of her last attempts to reach a northern public already mixed results. After 1870, white southerners gradually regained grown weary of the periodic racial disturbances in the South. Harper control of their states and localities, often through violence and spent the rest of her life writing novels and poetry, and working for the intimidation, denying black southerners their political gains causes of temperance and of racial and women’s rights. while Republicans in Washington and white northerners lost in- The position of African Americans in American society terest in policing their former enemies. was one of the two great issues of the Reconstruction era. The By the time the last federal troops left the South in 1877, other great issue was how and under what terms to readmit the the white southerners had prevailed. The Confederate states had former Confederate states. Between 1865 and 1867, under Presi- returned to the Union with all of their rights and many of their dent Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan, white southerners leaders restored. And the freed slaves remained in mostly sub- pretty much had their way with the former slaves and with their servient positions with few of the rights and privileges enjoyed by own state governments. Congressional action between 1867 and other Americans. WHITE SOUTHERNERS AND THE GHOSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY, 1865 HOW DID The casualties of war in the South continued long after the hostilities ceased. Cities such as southerners remember Richmond, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, and Columbia lay in ruins; farmsteads were stripped the war? How did it of everything but the soil; infrastructure, especially railroads, was damaged or destroyed; factories shape their response to Reconstruction? and machinery were demolished; and at least 5 million bales of cotton, the major cash crop, had gone up in smoke. Add a worthless currency, and the loss was staggering, climbing into hundreds Read the Document of billions of dollars in today’s currency. at www.myhistorylab.com Their cause lost and their society destroyed, white southerners lived through the summer Carl Schurz, Report on the Condition of and fall of 1865 surrounded by ghosts, the ghosts of lost loved ones, joyful times, bountiful har- the South (1865) vests, self-assurance, and slavery.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • H. Res. 1253 in the House of Representatives, U
    H. Res. 1253 In the House of Representatives, U. S., December 10, 2020. Whereas Joseph Hayne Rainey was born enslaved on June 21, 1832, in Georgetown, South Carolina; Whereas South Carolina prohibited the education of Black Americans, and instead of a formal education, Joseph H. Rainey learned the barbering trade from his father, Ed- ward Rainey; Whereas Edward Rainey used profits from his work as a bar- ber to buy his and his family’s freedom in the early 1840’s; Whereas Joseph H. Rainey eventually moved with his family to Charleston, South Carolina; Whereas in 1859, Joseph H. Rainey married his wife, Susan, with whom he had three children, Joseph, Herbert, and Olive; Whereas in 1861, Joseph H. Rainey was conscripted by the Confederate Army and worked as a ship’s steward aboard a Confederate vessel which secretly carried goods to the Union Navy; Whereas during the Civil War, in 1862, Joseph H. Rainey and his wife and family escaped to Bermuda, a British colony that had abolished slavery in 1834, where he un- 2 dertook successful entrepreneurial endeavors with his wife; Whereas in 1866 Joseph Rainey and his family moved back to Charleston, South Carolina after the Civil War had ended; Whereas Joseph H. Rainey co-founded the state Republican Party and represented Georgetown, South Carolina on the Party’s central committee; Whereas Joseph H. Rainey participated in the South Caro- lina State constitutional convention in 1868; Whereas Joseph H. Rainey won election to the House of Rep- resentatives in 1870 and was the first African American to serve in the House of Representatives; Whereas Joseph H.
    [Show full text]
  • H.Doc. 108-224 Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007
    H APPENDIX J H Constitutional Amendments and Major Civil RightsActs of Congress Referenced in the Text PUBLIC LAW/ AMENDMENT/AcT U.S. CODE MAIN PROVISIONS Thirteenth Amendment 13 Stat. 567; Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. 13 Stat. 774–775 Approved by the 38th Congress (1863–1865) as S.J. Res. 16; ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. Civil Rights Act of 1866 14 Stat. 27–30 Guaranteed the rights of all citizens to make and enforce contracts and to purchase, sell, or lease property. Passed by the 39th Congress (1865–1867) as S.R. 61. Fourteenth Amendment 14 Stat. 358–359 Declared that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. were citizens and that any state that denied or abridged the voting rights of males over the age of 21 would be subject to proportional reductions in its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Approved by the 39th Congress (1865–1867) as H.J. Res. 127; ratified by the states on July 9, 1868. Fifteenth Amendment 16 Stat. 346; Forbade any state to deprive a citizen of his vote because of race, color, or previous 16 Stat. 40–41 condition of servitude. Approved by the 40th Congress (1867–1869) as S.J. Res. 8; ratified by the states on February 3, 1870. First Ku Klux Klan Act 16 Stat. 140–146 Prohibited discrimination in voter registration on the basis of race, color, or (Civil Rights Act of 1870) previous condition of servitude. Established penalties for interfering with a person's right to vote.
    [Show full text]
  • End: Grant Sidebar>>>>>
    FINAL History of Wildwood 1860-1919 (chapter for 2018 printing) In the prior chapter, some of the key factors leading to the Civil War were discussed. Among them were the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the McIntosh Incident in 1836, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which led to “the Bleeding Kansas” border war, and the Dred Scott case which was finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. Two books were published during this turbulent pre-war period that reflected the conflicts that were brewing. One was a work of fiction: Uncle Tom’s Cabin or a Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe published in 1852. It was an anti-slavery novel and helped fuel the abolitionist movement in the 1850s. It was widely popular with 300,000 books sold in the United States in its first year. The second book was nonfiction: Twelve Years a Slave was the memoir of Solomon Northup. Northup was a free born black man from New York state who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. and sold into slavery. He was in bondage for 12 years until family in New York secretly received information about his location and situation and arranged for his release with the assistance of officials of the State of New York. His memoir details the slave markets, the details of sugar and cotton production and the treatment of slaves on major plantations. This memoir, published in 1853, gave factual support to the story told in Stowe’s novel. These two books reflected and enhanced the ideological conflicts that le d to the Civil War.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 15 Reconstruction 1865–1877
    Chapter 15 Reconstruction 1865–1877 Teaching Resources 4. As some African Americans began to agi- tate for political rights, congressional Re- Chapter Instructional Objectives publicans proposed the Wade-Davis Bill, a stricter substitute for Lincoln’s Ten Percent After you have taught this chapter, your students Plan, which laid down, as conditions for should be able to answer the following questions: the restoration of the rebellious states to 1. How did Presidents Lincoln and Johnson envision the Union, an oath of allegiance by a ma- Reconstruction? jority of each state’s adult white men, new state governments formed only by those 2. How and why did Republicans in Congress take who had never carried arms against the control of Reconstruction? Union, and permanent disfranchisement 3. What did African Americans expect after the Civil of Confederate leaders. War? What were the realities they encountered 5. The Wade-Davis Bill served notice that during Reconstruction? congressional Republicans were not going to turn Reconstruction policy over to the 4. What was the southern response(s) to Reconstruc- president. tion? 6. Rather than openly challenge Congress, 5. Why did a political crisis emerge in 1877? How did Lincoln executed a pocket veto of the it shape Reconstruction? Wade-Davis Bill by not signing it before Congress adjourned. 6. What were the successes and failures of Recon- 7. Lincoln also initiated informal talks with struction? congressional leaders aimed at finding common ground; Lincoln’s successor An- Chapter Annotated Outline drew Johnson, however, held the view that Reconstruction was the president’s prerog- I. Presidential Reconstruction ative.
    [Show full text]
  • Reconstructing the Republic, 1865-1877
    Volume 1 Building the American Republic A Narrative History to 1877 Harry L. Watson The University of Chicago Press ChiCago and London This is volume 1 of a two-volume narrative history of America by Harry L. Watson and Jane Dailey. Volume 1 is written by Watson; volume 2 is written by Dailey. To read digital editions of both volumes and more, please visit buildingtheamericanrepublic.org. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2018 by Harry L. Watson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30048- 1 (cloth) iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30051- 1 (paper) iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30065- 8 (e- book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226300658.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Watson, Harry L. | Dailey, Jane Elizabeth, 1963– Title: Building the American republic. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2017026856 | isbn 9780226300481 (vol. 1 ; cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226300511 (vol. 1 ; pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226300658 (vol. 1 ; e-book) | isbn 9780226300795 (vol. 2 ; cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226300825 (vol. 2 ; pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226300962 (vol.
    [Show full text]
  • B. August 3, 1824 – D. May 14, 1887 It Is the Tradition of Western Michigan
    WOODS CLASS IN MEMORIAM – JUSTICE WILLIAM BURNHAM WOODS UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT JUSTICE b. August 3, 1824 – d. May 14, 1887 It is the tradition of Western Michigan University’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School to name each entering class after a former justice of the Michigan Supreme Court or of the United States’ Supreme Court. Today’s entering class is named in honor of United States Supreme Court Justice William Burnham Woods. William Burnham Woods was born in Newark, Ohio, on August 3, 1824. His father, Ezekiel Woods, was a farmer-merchant from Kentucky. His mother, Sarah Burnham Woods, was from New England. Woods attended Western Reserve College and Yale, where he graduated valedictorian in 1845. He studied law with S.D. King in his hometown of Newark and became his partner after passing the Ohio bar in 1847. After nearly a decade of practice in Newark, where he rose to local prominence as a lawyer, Woods married Anne E. Warner in 1855, and was elected mayor of Newark the following year. His political experience as mayor was followed by an election on the Democratic ticket to the state legislature in 1857, where he was chosen Speaker of the House. When the Republicans gained control of the state House in 1860, Woods became the minority leader. Although opposed to the Civil War and President Lincoln’s policy, Woods was convinced that victory over the South was necessary. He joined the Union Army in 1862, and saw action at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and on General Sherman’s march through Georgia. Near the end of the war, he was promoted to the rank of brevet major general in 1866.
    [Show full text]
  • Reconstruction Report
    RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 122 Commerce Street Montgomery, Alabama 36104 334.269.1803 eji.org RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876 © 2020 by Equal Justice Initiative. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, modified, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without express prior written permission of Equal Justice Initiative. RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876 The Memorial at the EJI Legacy Pavilion in Montgomery, Alabama. (Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser) 5 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM 56 Political Violence 58 Economic Intimidation 63 JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 8 Enforcing the Racial Social Order 68 Emancipation and Citizenship Organized Terror and Community Massacres 73 Inequality After Enslavement 11 Accusations of Crime 76 Emancipation by Proclamation—Then by Law 14 Arbitrary and Random Violence 78 FREEDOM TO FEAR 22 RECONSTRUCTION’S END 82 A Terrifying and Deadly Backlash Reconstruction vs. Southern Redemption 84 Black Political Mobilization and White Backlash 28 Judicial and Political Abandonment 86 Fighting for Education 32 Redemption Wins 89 Resisting Economic Exploitation 34 A Vanishing Hope 93 DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION 42 A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING 96 VIOLENCE Known and Unknown Horrors Notes 106 Acknowledgments 119 34 Documented Mass Lynchings During the Reconstruction Era 48 Racial Terror and Reconstruction: A State Snapshot 52 7 INTRODUCTION Thousands more were assaulted, raped, or in- jured in racial terror attacks between 1865 and 1876. The rate of documented racial terror lynchings during Reconstruction is nearly three In 1865, after two and a half centuries of brutal white mobs and individuals who were shielded It was during Reconstruction that a times greater than during the era we reported enslavement, Black Americans had great hope from arrest and prosecution.
    [Show full text]
  • Bray V. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic: the Supreme Court's License for Domestic Terrorism
    Denver Law Review Volume 71 Issue 2 Article 6 January 2021 Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic: The Supreme Court's License for Domestic Terrorism Lisa J. Banks Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/dlr Recommended Citation Lisa J. Banks, Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic: The Supreme Court's License for Domestic Terrorism, 71 Denv. U. L. Rev. 449 (1994). This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Denver Law Review at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Denver Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic THE SUPREME COURT'S LICENSE FOR DOMESTIC TERRORISM "They once came in the night, wearing white hooded robes and brandishing fiery crosses, proclaiming that God was pro-white and on their side. Now they come in the morning, wearing suits and carrying incendiary posters, proclaiming that God is pro-life and on their side." INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, militant antiabortion groups, religious zealots, and radical conservative factions have dramatically increased their efforts to prevent women from exercising their constitutional right to an abor- tion.2 The level of violence has escalated rapidly,3 culminating in,the March 1993 shooting death of Dr. David Gunn, who performed legal abor- 4 tions at a health clinic in Florida. The violence continues unfettered. Clinics are besieged by angry mobs and each day doctors and patients face physical and verbal assault.5 Firebombs, death threats, and shootings have replaced reasoned debate in the anti-abortion crusade.
    [Show full text]
  • Civil War to Civil Rights Commemoration
    National Park Service U.S Department of the Interior Washington Support Office: Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science Interpretation, Education and Volunteers Civil War to Civil Rights Commemoration Summary Report DEDICATION This report honors all those who suffered and died in this nation’s struggles for freedom and equality. It is also dedicated to our colleague, Tim Sinclair, who was taken from us too soon. Timothy D. Sinclair, Sr. (1974-2016) Chief of Interpretation Selma to Montgomery NHT Tuskegee Airmen NHS and Tuskegee Institute NHS You took us on a walk from Selma to Montgomery. To keep your vision and memory alive, “We’re still marching!” Silent sentinels stood watch for 22 hours to commemorate the 22 hours of combat that took place at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle. FREDERICKSBURG AND SPOTSYLVANIA NMP Cover Graphic: Courtesy of Chris Barr FOREWORD The Civil War to Civil Rights Commemoration has been quite a journey. Thanks to all of you who helped make it a meaningful and memorable one for our country. We hope our efforts have helped Americans understand the connection between these two epic periods of time as a continuous march toward freedom and equality for all–a march that continues still today. Along the way, perhaps the National Park Service learned something about itself, as well. When we first began planning for this commemorative journey, there were several Civil War parks that had difficultly acknowledging slavery as the cause of the war. Both Civil War sites and civil rights sites questioned whether a combined “Civil War to Civil Rights” Commemoration would water down and weaken each.
    [Show full text]
  • H.Doc. 108-224 Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007
    H PART ONE H Former Black-American Members “The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood” THE SYMBOLIC GeneratION OF BLACK AMERICans IN Congress, 1870–1887 When Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi—the first African American to serve in Congress—toured the United States in 1871, he was introduced as the “Fifteenth Amendment in flesh and blood.”1 Indeed, the Mississippi-born preacher personified African-American emancipation and enfranchisement. On January 20, 1870, the state legislature chose Revels to briefly occupy a U.S. Senate seat, previously vacated by Albert Brown when Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861.2 As Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts escorted Revels to the front of the chamber to take his oath on February 25, the Atlanta Constitution reported that “the crowded galleries rose almost en masse, and each particular neck was stretched to its uttermost to get a view. A curious crowd (colored and white) rushed into the Senate chamber and gazed at the colored senator, some of them congratulating him. A very respectable looking, well dressed company of colored men and women then came up and took Revels captive, and bore him off in glee and triumph.”3 The next day, the Chicago Tribune jubilantly declared that “the first letter with the frank of a negro was dropped in the Capitol Post Office.”4 But Revels’s triumph was short-lived. When his appoint- Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, the first black Representative in Congress, earned the distinction of also being the first black man to preside over a session of the House, in April 1874.
    [Show full text]
  • The Crises of Reconstruction, 1865–1877
    16 THE CRISES OF RECONSTRUCTION, 1865–1877 CHAPTER OUTLINE • Reconstruction Politics, 1865–1868 • Reconstruction Governments • The Impact of Emancipation • New Concerns in the North, 1868–1876 • Reconstruction Abandoned, 1876–1877 RECONSTRUCTION POLITICS, 1865–1868 At the end of the Civil War, President Johnson might have exiled, imprisoned, or executed Confederate leaders and imposed martial law indefinitely. Demobilized Confederate soldiers might have continued armed resistance to federal occupation forces. Freed slaves might have taken revenge on former owners and other white southerners. But none of this occurred. Instead, intense political conflict dominated the immediate postwar years. National politics produced new constitutional amend- ments, a presidential impeachment, and some of the most ambitious domestic legis- lation ever enacted by Congress, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867–1868. The major outcome of Reconstruction politics was the enfranchisement of black men, a devel- opment that few—black or white—had expected when Lee surrendered. In 1865, only a small group of politicians supported black suffrage. All were Radical Republicans, a minority faction that had emerged during the war. Led by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the Radicals had clamored for the abolition of slavery and a demanding reconstruction policy. But the Radicals, outnumbered in Congress by other Republicans and opposed by the Democratic minority, faced long odds. Still, they managed to win broad Republican support for parts of their Reconstruction program, including black male enfranchisement. Just as civil war had led to eman- cipation, a goal once supported by only a minority of Americans, so Reconstruction policy became bound to black suffrage, a momentous change that originally had only narrow political backing.
    [Show full text]
  • "Vicksburg's Troubles:" Black Participation in the Body Politic
    Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 "Vicksburg's Troubles": Black Participation in the Body Politic and Land Ownership in the Age of Redeemer Violence Albert Dorsey Jr. Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “VICKSBURG’S TROUBLES:” BLACK PARTICIPATION IN THE BODY POLITIC AND LAND OWNERSHIP IN THE AGE OF REDEEMER VIOLENCE By ALBERT DORSEY JR. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012 Albert Dorsey Jr. defended this dissertation on October 29, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Maxine D. Jones Professor Directing Dissertation Maxine L. Montgomery University Representative James P. Jones Committee Member Jennifer L. Koslow Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii Dedicated to the memory of Ivory Johnson Sr., Mary Florence Johnson, and Ivory Joe Walker iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to pursue my graduate degrees at Florida State University. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Maxine D. Jones for that. Her scholarly guidance has inspired my intellectual growth and forced me to reach beyond my comfort zone. I have always tried and will continue to try to make her proud. I am also inspired by the words of my late grandparents, Mr.
    [Show full text]