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Reconstruction
5 articles on Reconstruction
Reconstruction
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 3055 Includes: Beginnings of Reconstruction Policy | Johnsonian Reconstruction | Congressional Reconstruction | Southern “Redemption” and the End of Reconstruction | BibliographyThe Civil War essentially ended on 9 April 1865 with the surrender of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Yet another battle lay ahead as political leaders sought to repair the fractured Union. During the period 1863–1877 the United States focused on reuniting North and South, and as the historian Eric Foner notes, began “the adjustment of American society to the end of slavery.” The Reconstruction era witnessed the birth of federal guarantees for African American citizenship and civil rights through the passage of three important constitutional amendments, but it was also a time fraught with conflict. The direction of Reconstruction changed irrevocably on 14 April 1865 when President Abraham Lincolnwas shot at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 4022 Includes: Role of the Federal Government | Presidential Reconstruction | Congressional Reconstruction | Supreme Court and Reconstruction | Freedpeople during Reconstruction | Opposition to Reconstruction | Reconstruction Ends | BibliographyPeriod immediately following the Civil War, during which the United States sought to rebuild the South physically, politically, socially, and economically. Reconstruction, also called the Second American Revolution, is an often misunderstood era of United States history. For decades, historians presented Reconstruction as a time when the South was a region besieged by a punitive North. According to this view, President Abraham Lincoln initially offered reasonable terms to the rebellious Southern states to speed reunion; but Radical Republicans, the liberal wing of the Republican Party, instituted a period of “Negro rule” in which blacks, incompetent to govern, mismanaged the South. In this interpretation, conscientious whites “redeemed” the South by using secret patriotic organizations such as the ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Word Count: 6052 Includes: Economic Implications | Political Implications | Social Implications | BibliographyThe Civil War ( 1861 – 1865 ) ended on 9 April 1865 , when the Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The country set about restructuring itself into a new nation without slavery but with nearly 4 million former slaves to be absorbed into a different economic, political, and social order. Viewing this period with great expectations, blacks seized the opportunity to exercise their freedom and prove their worthiness for citizenship.The fiery activist, poet, and orator, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper , counseled freedpeople to exercise their ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to United States History
Word Count: 1902 Includes: Background to Reconstruction. | The Reconstruction Era: 1865–1877. | Evaluating Reconstruction.the attempt to rebuild and reform the South politically, economically, and socially after the Civil War, and to refashion race relations throughout the nation. Historians of the era have focused on four questions: How much change occurred between the antebellum and postbellum eras? Was Reconstruction too radical or too conservative? When did it start and end? How and why did it fail? Reconstruction proved as deeply political as the controversies over slavery and secession, and all three followed the same pattern: liberalism triumphed when reactionaries overreached. In 1861, southern secession freed Republicans from the pressure to compromise to preserve the Union. Over time, the Abraham Lincolnadministration and the Republican majority in Congress repealed racist laws, freed secessionists' slaves, ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to American Military History
Word Count: 2403When the Confederate forces surrendered in April 1865, the U.S. Army embarked on a mission unparalleled in its history: the postwar occupation of a rebellious section of its own country as the enforcer of a politically determined process of reconstruction. No previous war had required such duty. During the Civil War, reconstruction had begun haltingly in 1862 in those parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Virginia under Union military control. However, Abraham Lincoln's “ten percent” plan for the restoration of individual loyalty and government functions was at best experimental. Military efforts remained focused on victory rather than post-war expectations.Confederate surrender changed the picture entirely. Many parts of the South had by now experienced the presence of Union troops. Neither soldiers nor civilians knew how ...
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